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LETTERS 



OF 



MARTHA LeBARON GODDARD 



SELECTED BY 



SARAH THEO BROWN 



WITH RECOLLECTIONS BY 

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 



DAVIS & BANISTER 

WORCESTER MASSACHUSETTS 
1 901 



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WORCESTER 

PRESS OF C HAMILTON 

1901 



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HOME LETTERS 



TO THE 



WORCESTER EVENING TRANSCRIPT, 



i860. 



HOME LETTERS. 



i860. 

'THE interests of Worcester have been 
-*- of late, snow-storms, perilous walking 
and lectures. Frederick Douglass came 
first. He was brilliant, but it is simply 
impossible to report his lecture. His wit 
is rich and free, his satire keen and effec- 
tive, his pathos deep but repressed, but he 
owes his power as a public speaker to his 
wonderful voice, expressive face and gest- 
ures. A scarcely perceptible shrug of the 
shoulders, or a flash of the eyes, will 
sometimes make his words sharp, and a 
sunny smile illuminating the dark hand- 
some face will open the ears of his hearers 
to reproof and condemnation of the govern- 
ment, that would be borne only with angry 
impatience if spoken by the stern Puritan 



2 HOME LETTERS. 

and peerless orator, Wendell Phillips. He 
is noble in accepting the responsibility of 
the whites, and sharing the suffering of 
the blacks ; he is manly, so let us honor 
him. 

I am in doubt whether to put Curtis 
who has just been here, under the head 
of music or lectures. His voice and 
Wendell Phillips' are, I believe, the most 
wonderful in the world and so unlike ! 
Curtis is always sad, there is pathos even 
in his fun, but Phillips is full of victory. 
A violin in the hands of a master, pleads 
sometimes like Curtis, but only a cornet 
or a trumpet can reach the exultant purity 
and sweetness of Phillips' voice. You 
must have sometimes seen how the nearer 
clouds drifting across a dark western sk}^ 
have been lighted into sweet misty crimson 
and rose-color by the sunset, that is the 
color of Curtis' voice ; Phillips' is like the 
deep pure gold of the sunset itself, clear, 
steady and unfathomable, not lighted, but 
aglow with its own life. 



HOME LETTERS. 3 

i860. 

What can one talk about to-day but the 
snow and the weather — to be out in a 
snow-storm is almost always enjoyment. 
For the last few days, when the world 
seen from within doors has been colorless, 
the sky permanently gray, when all true 
life seemed to have stopped, when all 
books were dull except for people who 
have open fires, then was the time to test 
a winter's walk. Let us go where no one 
has been before us, under the white pines 
and willows, where every step breaks with 
a crushing sound through the shining 
crust — The crust over your spirit breaks 
too, you can feel your blood grow red, 
you seem to be walking fast into the spring- 
time, the willow twigs are yellow in their 
icy sheathes, the elms are dreaming and 
talking in their sleep of the glory of that 
nameless color which the sun gives to them, 
and to them only. But budding color is 
not all we see ; the wind is the most won- 
derful draughtsman and everywhere have 



4 HOME LETTERS. 

his fingers been busy, in the long sweep- 
ing curves of the snow-drifts, and in 
the most exquisite and varied adornment 
of every spot where a snow flake could 
rest ; even the monotony of garden fences 
is destroyed, by the fancies of the wind, 
till there is hardly an inch of the snow 
bank on top of them, which has not some 
special beauty of form and color ; every 
part is a study for an architect, roofing and 
tiling, fluting and cornice, perfect models 
for gables and domes. 



i860. 
I have long wanted to make a speech 
about Worcester Fairs. Now seems to be 
the time, for if I had written weekly letters 
the last month they would all have been 
about Fairs of all sizes and kinds, for differ- 
ent purposes, but alike in their result, viz., 
*< making money," as it is called, of giving 
much pleasure and a great deal of fatigue 



HOME LETTERS. O 

to the fair workers. The talk about 
** gouging," '' exorbitant prices," and ''of 
course one pays at a Fair twice as much as 
a thing is worth," has been kept up so long 
that many people really believe it, while 
the truth that much of the wrong and in- 
justice of fairs lies in undervaluing work. 
For instance — a lady buys material, or 
uses what she has, which costs fifty cents ; 
she spends two or three days in delicate, 
skilful work, and then sells the result of 
her taste and labor for seventy-five cents, 
perhaps a dollar. 

With more costly things the matter is still 
worse, and three dollars' worth of material, 
put together with marvellous skill and 
patience, and I know not how many hours 
of labor, will sell for $2.50. All this 
seems wrong. We need to have Ruskin 
lecture us on the value of hand and head 
work. It is not strange that ladies who 
consider their own exquisite work of no 
account should be so unwilling to pay 
justly for what they hire, or that fifty cents 



6 HOME LETTERS. 

for a day's sewing should seem extrava- 
gant to one who will work two da3's to 
earn ten cents for a fair. Of course, 
people have a right to give away their 
work, but then it should be understood that 
the work is given away, and purchasers 
should not delude themselves with the idea 
they have in any way paid for what the}' 
have got. At a Fair here, a few days 
ago, I was asked, "Is this a great charity"? 
and answered, '* No, it is a great piece of 
justice"; the reply, '*That is better, if 
justice were done charity would be need- 
less." 'T was a golden sentence, and 
should be printed in large letters over the 
entrance to almost every fair. 

If politics were not so funny just now I 
would not speak of them ; but that Bu- 
chanan, after playing *' loose" for four 
years should now finish his game by play- 
ing "fast" for one day, is a rare bit of 
comedy. The clergymen here are to have 
a union meeting (perhaps it would be 
more respectful to them to say a combined 



HOME LETTERS. 7 

meeting) on the day appointed for national 
humiliation, but I have no idea what they 
intend to do. 

It is the fashion to tell secession news, 
so I will confide to you, from a private 
letter, that Nantucket is about to secede 
from *' rabid Massachusetts, and set up a 
monarchy on her own hook." She is 
secure from attacks by land, and a Colt's 
revolver, set in the middle of the Island, 
will probably protect her shores. 

Mrs. Macready has been reading here, 
and her dressing is so beautiful that to see 
it is worth the price of a ticket. The 
satisfaction she gives me lies in her ren- 
dering of silk and lace and her beautiful 
hair. For lecturers we have what every- 
body else has, also a charming concert, 
given by the Mendelssohn Quintette Club. 
With that to remember, three more to hope 
for, the January Atlantic and the Southern 
news to read, not to speak of six promised 
entertainments for 35 cts., are we not 
provided for until the 4th of March ? Why 



8 HOME LETTERS. 

look forward farther? *' After that, the 
Deluge." 



i860. 

June has gone, and the newspapers have 
told about the Worcester interests and 
entertainments ; the Sunday School picnics, 
which were considered great successes ; 
the growing popularity of Lake Quinsiga- 
mond, and the members and skill of the 
boat clubs. But they have not told about 
our water-lilies. The little pond where 
they crowd and blossom is nameless to 
most people, but it is a part of Lake Quin- 
sigamond. It has a right to the name 
Chamaranan, with a story attached to it. 
It is a perfect time for lilies when the 
grape-vines are in blossom — so much 
beauty and fragrance together. Our last 
party consisted of six, that is the best 
number for enjoyment. We started very 
early in the morning, before the lilies had 



HOME LETTERS. 9 

opened or the haycocks had waked up and 
taken off their night-caps ; and ever}^ 
minute of the early ride was a pleasure. 

A few field lilies were flaming by the 
roadside, and if Solomon had ever wanted 
to rival them he must have wrapped him- 
self in his reddest mantle and have laid 
down in the very green grass, after the 
manner of Jesse at the tomb in somebody's 
interesting and strange old picture of the 
genealogy of Jesus. The tangle of blos- 
soms and vines told of midsummer, but 
the pink spires of hardback were disa- 
greeably suggestive of the coming autumn, 
and a little like a skeleton at a feast. But 
our feast had no skeleton. Such a break- 
fast on the rocks ! There was nothing 
poetical in the bread, the meat, or the 
coffee and the appetites, yet they were all 
satisfactory in the highest degree, and 
some of the company did have the grace 
♦o adorn the table with oak leaves and 
ild roses. After the breakfast came the 

own of summer pleasures — the delicate. 



10 HOME LETTEBS. 

slow paddling among the lilies. To be 
sure, the boats are wet and dirty, and no- 
body who expects to keep dry and stiff 
should ever go out in them ; but we didn't, 
and were dressed in unpretty but very 
convenient costumes. The clumsy little 
boats are pushed among the lily pads with 
a slight crushing sound, sweeter than even 
the ripple of the water against sharp bows ; 
and the great green leaves, which look 
like a solid floor before us, turn lazily 
over, so that we leave behind us a path of 
dark, glossy red. 

We could, literally, have filled our boat 
with lilies — great, queenly flowers — perfect 
in beauty, opening their whole hearts to 
the sunshine ; half-closed blossoms, resting 
one cheek on a broad leaf and vainly 
trying to hold back their fragrance and 
hide their golden treasure ; little, hard 
buds, standing up straight and defiant, 
as if they never meant to open to any- 
thing, but dared you to come and pick 
them, and then, when you accept the chal- 



HOME LETTEBS. 11 

lenge, suddenly hiding and leaving you 
with empty hands, but arms wet to the 
shoulder. Here and there are flowers 
whose outer leaves are almost crimson ; 
these are hailed with shouts of delight, 
and treasured as if others like them would 
never bloom. 

You know how beautiful they are after 
we have brought them home ; I can not 
tell you how beautiful they are before. 
You must go and see for yourself. 



i860. 

Some time ago an advertisement, headed 
*' Reading without Tears," attracted my 
attention and excited my hope. So many 
novels are so full of melancholy, intense 
pathos and dreadful experiences, even 
when the hero and heroine come out right 
in the end, they had travelled such a 
weary way, walked through so much 
darkness and briars, their frolicsomeness 



12 HOME LETTERS. 

thoroughly disciplined out of them, that 
one can not help wondering whether a 
happier life, with the risk of being a little 
spoiled by it, were not preferable to so 
painful a journey — to so complete colorless 
an ending. At last, I thought, a cheerful 
novel has been written. But I was disap- 
pointed. ** Reading without Tears" was 
a primer, and the novel I wanted was still 
unwritten. But, yesterday, my desire was 
satisfied. ** Semi-Detached House" is 
sunny from the first page to the last, and 
is a charming book. It has no preface 
and no pretences. It is not theological, 
philosophical, or sentimental. There 
are no murders or mysteries in it, no 
strange men nor prim, white-gowned and 
hard-souled girls, and, ten thousand thanks 
to the author, no travels in Switzerland or 
Italy, and no talk about art. It is a story 
of good, kind men and women, who are 
natural, with funny, little peculiarities and 
attractive faults, who have no desire to be 
inhumanly good. It is full of gay, good- 



HOME LETTERS. 13 

natiired, spirited family talk, of sweet 
thoughtfulness for others, and of perfect 
friendliness. The story is told well. The 
satire is playful, not sharp ; and the pic- 
tures are of happy, sunny lives, of people 
who had a good time in the world, who 
loved God and their neighbors, and who 
opened every door and window of their 
hearts to air and sunlight. 



i860. 

I should like to send you some pretty 
or spirited bits of Worcester life, but I 
know of none just now that are tellable. 
I think a description of the place you are 
in would seem to most people like a fairy 
tale. The little green island, without dust, 
without roads, without carriages and 
horses, without a bowling alley or billiard 
table, unreached by cars or steamboat, or 
any other public conveyance ; peaceful and 
beautiful, with its unbroken fields of grass, 



14 HOME LETTERS. 

its group of strange old cedars ; rich in 
historical associations and the inclosing 
beauty, with the ceaseless but ever-varying 
sound of the sea. More like a fairy tale 
still, the true account of the hospitable 
island prince, rich in all good things ex- 
cepting money, and of the guests he 
gathers round him, men and w^omen of 
rare culture, even according to Mr. Emer- 
son's broad definition, who knew the litera- 
ture of almost all lands and yet have not 
lost one bit of their simple heartedness and 
enthusiasm. How we might string on the 
thread of our story, like amber beads or a 
rosary of sea shells, days of absolute indo- 
lence, with books and sunshine, and nights 
filled with music, moonlight and sentiment, 
and with listening to the incomprehensible 
ocean. Great waves are exciting, but the 
deep, steady tone of the calm sea is like 
the beating of a great, passionate heart 
that cannot make its life rich and grand, 
but that waits under the happy sunshine or 
the tender moonlight, in apparant calm- 



HOME LETTERS. 15 

ness, for the time when it, too, can be free, 
to fling its spray into the air with exulta- 
tion and unconscious power. But we have 
had something in Worcester that you will 
care for. On Wednesday, we heard 
Charles Sumner, and I wish I could make 
you know how good it was. His reception 
at the Republican Convention was enthu- 
siastic and touching ; it seemed as if men 
never would be satisfied with telling him 
how they admired him. But better than 
all the cheering were the tears of enthu- 
siasm that were dashed away, in vain 
attempts to hide them, by men of whose 
love even Sumner might be proud. He 
spoke a long while. You can read the 
speech : but you cannot read, I wish I 
could tell you, how well he looks, how 
strong and brave ; how his magnificent 
figure and carnage satisfies one's eyes ; 
and how the deep thoughtfulness, that is 
almost sadness, in his face is not light- 
ened even by his attempts at fun. I don't 
believe he knows how to play ; he has not 



16 HOME LETTERS. 

the gift of tossing his words about lightly 
and making them catch all the colors of 
the rainbow and dance in the light of 
happy fancy. He is too grand for that, 
and I am sure the want of it is no loss to 
him. Crowd the two fine words, manly 
and kingly, to their uttermost, with all that 
you know of calmness and strength, and 
they will tell you how Sumner appeared 
to us. A political convention, even of 
Republicans, is not usually considered a 
good place to study elegance of manner, 
yet this last convention showed them both. 
The elegance and grace of one of the 
presiding officers was worth waiting hours 
in a crowd to see ; and the manner with 
which a gentleman withdrew some motion 
that had been objected to in a mean 
and disagreeable way by somebody who 
seemed to misunderstand purposely, made 
me remember Whittier's lines about Dr. 
Howe : — 

" Said I not well that Bayards 
And Sidneys still are here." 



ROME LETTEBS. 17 

We had a fire here the other night. I 
could not see the blaze, but the whole 
valley was heavy with mist, which the 
light changed into a flame-colored heaving 
sea ; the hills were wrapped in smoke, 
neither houses or trees could be seen. The 
night was still and clear, and just above 
the fiery mist, in the clear blue, Orion lay 
shining calmly and steadily. Orion is to 
me the only human constellation. I 
always see him, as I learned to know him 
in an atlas, years ago, lying along the 
southern sky in calm repose, with his right 
arm ready, if need were, for work or 
fighting. After awhile ihe mist of our 
fire disappeared, churches and houses 
shone out white and plain, with illumi- 
nated windows ; the trees were clear 
against the sky, the light all faded, the 
soft night had its own way again, and the 
echo of footsteps on the street died slowly 
away. 

My letter may seem to you to die as 
slowly ; but it is surely dead now. 
3 



18 HOME LETTEBS. 

i860. 

It is more than a month since I have 
written to you ; but there is no longer en- 
tertainment in politics, no ** wide-awake" 
processions and no speeches, poor or 
good. I wonder much about all this bet- 
ting and lying and wilful, ungenerous 
misrepresentation that filled the lives of 
comparatively good men for weeks before 
election day. Do you suppose they only- 
wear such things on the outside for a little 
while and then lay them entirely aside 
when the political need, as they think it, 
has gone by? Do you suppose they have 
found out some process by which they can 
touch pitch and not be defiled? It is 
easier to believe even that than that many 
of the best men we know are as false and 
as unmanly as their political actions and 
speeches would imply. 

I heard, by chance, a bit of conversation 
the other day. Two young ladies were 
criticising the new house of a literary 
friend. One said, *' It is not a work o( 



HOME LETTEBS. 19 

art; there is no idea in it." The other 
laughed, and said, *' What do you know 
about works of art? You can't appreciate 
them." The reply, "I know this much, 
that nothing is a work of art that has not 
an idea embodied in it." Is n't that a 
definition to be remembered? 

I heard this story the other day. When 
Nathaniel Green left his home to join the 
army of the Revolution, his mother, who 
was a Rhode Island Quakeress, said to 
him, " Nathaniel, don't thee ever get shot 
in the back." Is n't that ever so much 
better than the historical and rather stately, 
** Return with your shield, or on it." 



i860. 

The Worcester Theatre, whose opening 
is as rare as that of the Night-Blooming 
Cereus, is now in its second week of blos- 
soming. But one does not want to talk of 
evening entertainments when the days are 



20 HOME LETTERS. 

SO beautiful. March seems to have for- 
gotten for awhile its old habits of wind and 
cold, and has given us an ideal spring day. 
It is delicious to sit by an open window 
with a glass of golden jasmines near, 
making the air sweet with their lilac-like 
perfume ; to sit still and do nothing but 
feel the promise of summer. The sky is 
of that intense blue that Ruskin says is 
not color, but fire, and the bluebirds are 
like little bits of it made alive ; grass- 
hoppers have come, and snowdrops and 
hepaticas ; and, occasionally, a black or 
tan-colored caterpillar goes along indo- 
lently in the sunshine. Even the old stone 
walls look softened ; they have a sort of 
tenderness about them, as if they were 
glad in the fresh life of the moss that 
grows in their crevices, and the soft- 
colored prettiness of their neighbors, the 
willow catkins. We shall have no more 
of the glittering whiteness or the strange 
blue shadows of the winter ; but we are 
going to have what is a great deal better, 



HOME LETTERS. 21 

the contenting depth and richness of color 
that comes with the spring, grows into 
human and almost oppressive mystery in 
the summer, and dies in the burning gold 
and crimson of autumn. 

It is impossible to talk extravagantly 
about color ; we all live in it, and should 
be miserable, forlorn wretches if we lost 
for a single day its ever-changing beauty. 
Eyes and heart breathe in color as the 
lungs do the air, unconsciously and con- 
stantly ; and even in city streets they find 
enough to feed on. The other day, I 
looked for a long while at the tall, bare, 
worn-looking sycamore trees, opposite the 
City Hall ; if the day had been grey and 
sunless the trees would have been depres- 
sing to look at, but the blue sky and the 
warm light gave a sort of beauty to the 
scarred branches, and made waiting for 
the foliage seem not quite hopeless ; then 
I turned my head and looked up into the 
rich brown of an elm. It was like a 
sudden change from mid-winter to June ; 



22 HOME LETTERS. 

like leaving a cold-natured, dried-up fossil 
of a man, without either glow or life in his 
existence, for a royal heart of a rich life. 
I cannot tell what color is like. That is 
one of the inexpressible things which 
Whitman wrestles with in his strange 
poem in the Atlantic^ *'0, I think I have 
not understood anything, not a single ob- 
ject, and that no man ever can." Perhaps 
the great white pines and the hemlocks, 
with the matchless beauty of their delicate 
twigs, and with shadows in their hearts, 
know the meaning of color ; for, when 
the maples and the chestnuts have quite 
forgotten their fire and their heaped-up 
gold, the memory of the summer still 
lingers in the depths of the pine, and 
glows and flickers there mysteriously like 
the flame in the heart of the opal. The 
early spring brings other things ; for in- 
stance, remarkable little pedlars. There 
is one boy, perhaps he is a merchant 
catkin, who finds his way into dining 
rooms and parlors, so young that the letter 



HOME LETTERS. 23 

C is Still an insurmountable obstacle to 
him, yet he offers you " Tandy and Top- 
Torn " with a very sweet smile and the 
self-possession of an experienced trader ; 
of course, everybod}^ buys, but it is half 
funny and half sad to see the baby trying 
to make money. Perhaps he will earn his 
first jacket ; perhaps he will not be spoiled 
in the training. I am glad there is a 
world of comfort as well as of doubt, in 
perhaps. 



i860. 

Well, what did we do on Fast Day? 
We did not go to meeting, but took a long 
ramble. We, means myself and the very 
pleasantest companion, provided with a 
basket of luncheon and Mrs. Browning's 
new volume of poems. We stopped first 
to give a message to a little black woman 
I had before seen on the street, who looked 
very poor and very happy. I wish you 



24 HOME LETTERS. 

could see the glory of color in her room. 
The floor was clean ; there were a few 
wooden chairs, a white table and a stove ; 
that was all the furniture, — but you only 
looked at the flowers. The blazing scarlet 
of geraniums, the royal purple of the 
cineraria, the little golden bells of the 
mahemia, all trembling in the light ; half- 
opened rosebuds, heliotropes, whose frag- 
rance filled you with dreamy delight, and, 
almost hidden behind the large plants, 
delicate primroses. These were the poor 
woman's treasures ; on these she spent 
much of her earnings. If you had met her 
on the street you might have given her food 
or clothing ; in her own room you would 
hardly have dared to offer her only the 
rare beauty of gorgeous flowers. Do you 
remember what Douglass Jerrold says in 
his *' Tragedy of the Till " of the comfort 
the flowers gave to the poor and suffering, 
and how Isaac's unhappiness began when 
he left off* buying primroses to save his 
money. 



HOME LETTEBS. 25 

Leaving the flowers and their little 
queen, wondering how she can make her 
ivies grow so luxuriantly over her walls, 
we went on our way to the covered bridge 
over the Norwich Railroad. You grow 
dizzy there for a few moments, for the 
light from the ripples of water below is 
reflected on the walk, and the continual 
waving motion makes you feel as if you 
were in a hammock ; but no matter about 
that ; we shall hear what we came to hear, 
the music of the telegraph wires. No- 
where in the town is it so sweet, deep and 
varied. We had no poetical fancies about 
love messages sung by the wind, for we 
knew that the real meanings were proba- 
bly about stocks and politics, and we 
wanted to hear the wind sing of nothing 
but freedom. One does need imagination 
to hear that, you know. A little farther 
on we began to look for flowers. Our 
bunches of trailing arbutus grew very 
slowly, but we found more hepaticas than 
we could gather, and one little stranger, 



26 HOME LE TTERS. 

miles away from its home. A dainty little 
flower, veined with the tender pink you 
see in a deep-colored anemone or in an 
oxalis. Its cup seemed full of pink pollen, 
and on the same stem a cluster of long- 
pointed, lovely buds. Perhaps you prefer 
a botanical description, a proper name, for 
which you must look in the botany. The 
flower is Claytonia Latifolia^ in honor of 
Dr. John Clayton ; leaves ovate lanceolate, 
leaves of the calyx obtuse, etc. We ate 
our luncheon in a pretty, sunny place, 
near Patch's woods, then went over the 
hill to the Cascade. Sauntering along 
we found the first white bloodroot— only 
one could be seen ; they were all wrapped 
tightly in their green cloaks, reminding us 
of the game we used to play when we 
were children, *' There were seven Span- 
iards straight from Spain." We did not 
read a word of Mrs. Browning, but were 
glad to have the book with us, as you like 
to know a friend is in town though you do 
not see her. In the afternoon we cleared 



HOME LETTERS. 27 

up writing-desks and treasure-boxes, and 
were ashamed to find how many remem- 
brances recalled nothing. There were 
faded lilacs and rose leaves and a great 
bunch of dead apple blossoms that neither 
of us remembered, so we threw them away 
and laughed at our old selves ; one we did 
not destroy, — a little hard ball, that had 
once been a wild rosebud, picked fourteen 
years ago, and kept because it recalled the 
most beautiful girl I have ever known, as 
she stood upon a grassy knoll with her 
sunny hair blown away from her face, her 
eyes full of light and her parted lips 
showing how refined and beautiful a large 
mouth could be. We looked over letters 
and birthday verses, laughed and cried 
and felt rather old, then talked of other 
things. 



i860. 

I have neither concerts or lectures to 
write you about and have read nothing 



28 HOME LETTERS. 

but the '* Marble Faun," which I dislike^ 
it is damp and uncanny. One might fill a 
column about its mysteries and its possi- 
bilities, but it seems not worth while. So, 
instead of a talk we will have a long walk 
and make calls upon some nice people ; 
but you must take off your beautiful, rust- 
ling gown and put on a plain one, for my 
friends are poor, and it seems to me quite 
as improper for us to make a parade of 
our worldly riches before them as it would 
be to them to boast to us of their spiritual 
riches. No matter if there are clouds in 
the sky, there will be sunshine enough in 
the house of the washerwoman upon whom 
we will make our first call ; she is a 
genuine, happy saint, though neither 
Protestant or Roman Catholic. She is an 
Englishwoman who has lost her property, 
been deceived by persons she trusted, and 
neglected by her children. To one looking 
on, her life seems a hard one, with little in 
it to rejoice over ; to her it seems a series 
of special providences, and she overflows 



HOME LET TEES. 29 

with trust and gladness. She lives a per- 
fectly unselfish life and does not know it ; 
she will tell you with wondering delight of 
gifts and kindnesses received, but she 
never speaks of the time and strength she 
gives so lavishly in the service of others. 
She is sunny-hearted, and nothing shadows 
the clear light of her blue eyes, or checks 
her gay, child-like laughter, except occa- 
sional home-sickness for Old England ; 
and that one thread of her life is strangely 
touching, for all other threads, tangled as 
they look to us, she has changed to shining 
smoothness. Now we will go farther on 
toward the Canal, a dreary, unnecessarily 
dirty place, with a few clean spots in it. 
Let us stop and talk for a moment to this 
strong, tall Scotchwoman, with a marvel- 
lous name full of double letters. She is 
fine-looking, self-possessed, and has real 
dignity. She will tell you the sweetest 
shilling she ever had she earned by the 
sweat of her brow ; and I wish you could 
have seen her the other day when a series 



30 HOME LETTERS. 

of misfortunes forced her to accept assist- 
ance. She did not abate one jot of her 
pride. She knew she had no reason to do 
that ; she did not pour out protestations 
and benedictions, and her hearty grasp of 
the hand that helped her and the assured 
friendHness of her, **You will come and 
see me," made all social pride absolutely 
disappear. You would have been truly 
proud of her in her short, coarse gown, 
heavy boots and genuine, uncultured 
speech. 

Here is a colony of Irish, — dirty, noisy 
and good-natured ; some of them are very 
poor and some have all they want. There 
is, at least, one handsome child in every 
family, and you can see that whatever 
comforts these women lack they have as 
much real satisfaction in the picturesque 
arrangement of their tatters, over barrel 
hoops, as their models have in the full 
sweep of richly-tinted silks over *' floating 
bells." However, we must not linger in 
this street, for I want you to see a little 



HOME LETTEBS. 31 

girl of fourteen who keeps house for her 
father. The rooms are upstairs ; the lower 
part of the house is filthy ; but in the 
kitchen of the young housekeeper we find 
exquisite neatness. She is alone most of 
the day ; she sews and cooks for him, and 
keeps everything very comfortable ; her 
account of her mistakes is very amusing 
and, altogether, she is one of the nicest, 
brightest little girls I have ever known. 
Near by is a pretty, little Frenchwoman, 
with olive complexion and sparkling black 
eyes. She will pour out a flood of hurried 
words about her poverty and her old 
man. If he is at home she complains 
of him ; if he is making his semi-annual 
visit at the County House she entreats you 
vehemently to get him out. She is very 
spirited and piquant and, under all circum- 
stances, adorns her magnificent hair with 
the jauntiest of fresh caps and the brightest 
of artificial flowers ; she has the gift of 
dressing well, and with a cheap calico 
and a bit of lace will make a toilette that 



32 HOME LETTEBS. 

half the fashionable women in the town 
would envy if they saw it. Round the 
corner, in the next street, in a low, flat- 
roofed house, lives a German family. 
Please go to the door and ask some ques- 
tion for the sake of seeing the honest 
German face and hearing the broken 
English of the mother. I have been there 
more than once and am rather afraid to go 
again, yet it is worth some risk to hear her 
say '* Good-Bye," when you leave her; it 
is a little bit of music, better than one 
often hears. One more call on Main 
Street, in a pleasant, snug room. There 
we find a beautiful, slender, graceful 
woman, with two children. She is twenty 
years old, and she will tell you a strange 
story of oppression and crime. She was 
the favorite slave of an unmarried master, 
who gave her a nice home, clothes, ser- 
vants to wait upon her, and loved her in a 
coarse, selfish way. She was true to him 
and bore with his passionate caprices until, 
tempted by an almost fabulous price from 



HOME LETTEBS. 33 

a guest, he sold her and she ran away. 
The oldest child is a mulatto ; but the 
beautiful, fair baby is like its mother, and 
if you can look into the child's violet eyes 
or listen to the mother's story of her own 
life, and she will tell you of the mildest 
form of slavery, without tears of pity and 
indignation, without hating slavery with 
an unutterable hatred, without a conviction 
of the inexpressible wickedness of the men 
who know its horrors and yet would extend 
it or let it alone, you are entirely without 
heart and soul, and it is no matter what 
becomes of you. 



i860. 

Nearly a month since New Year's Day. 
The ladies who received but six calls have 
forgotten their neglect, and the sixty have 
forgotten the names of their callers, so it 
seems a good time to say something of this 
4 



34 HOME LETTEBS. 

custom. The papers request ladies to be 
at home to their friends, and most ladies 
comply. The day is very fatiguing. 
There are hurried calls which give no one 
any satisfaction ; a few broken sentences, 
such as "fine day," "made fifty," "got 
forty-five more to make," " can't stay, of 
course," wishes for a year's happiness 
from the lips, only ; and so ends till New 
Year's comes again. To be sure, there 
are calls, very bright ones, so spirited and 
bright that their sparkle is left for hours, 
like the sudden flashing of jewels in the 
sunlight ; and there are others of elegant 
repose, filled with pleasant, sunny talk 
about real things ; calls that bring rest, for 
which one is grateful. The funniest calls 
are made by intimate friends, with whom 
an ordinary day of conversation is endless, 
to whom there is never time enough to say 
what one wishes to. But on New Year's 
Day all is different ; the five or ten min- 
utes' talking is up-hill work, very stupid, 
and rather mortifying, for the brain abso- 



HOJIE LET TEES. 35 

lutely refuses to work satisfactorily ; how- 
ever, this is only to be laughed at, for the 
next day the dam of dulness is taken 
away, the brain does its duty, and talk 
flows easily again. One expects on this 
day, perhaps, stately, cordial greetings 
from elderly gentlemen, whose calls are 
always a compliment ; but they do not 
come. Perhaps one looks for the half- 
dozen who make parties brilliant, and who 
always know what to say, who are never 
solemn or silly, who do their best, and 
who make the women to whom they talk 
do their best ; but, unfortunately, they are 
not making calls. Perhaps we wait for 
some pleasant street acquaintance whose 
eyes wish to make one know more of that 
life that has filled them with such strange, 
sad beauty ; but these do not improve 
the New- Year's opportunity, and so add 
another to the long list of " might have 
beens." 



36 HOME LETTEBS. 

i860. 

Grace Greenwood has just given a lec- 
ture here on the men and women of twenty 
years hence, " The Children of To-day." 
The great charm of the lecture was its 
simplicity, its entire freedom from preten- 
sion. People listened with interest because 
she talked of something which she knew and 
cared about. One cause of the unsatisfac- 
toriness of our public speaking is that so 
many seem to have very little idea of what 
they are talking. Statements of thoughts 
that come clear from the brain and warm 
from the heart are uncommon. Glittering 
generalities are at a premium, and fine- 
sounding words, rolled out as if they were 
heavy with meaning, pass unchallenged by 
hundreds of kind, uncritical listeners. I 
know that criticism may be too sharp ; but, 
on the other hand, I think the kindness 
of audiences is often abused by the best 
lecturers. One of our Lyceum favorites 
says, with a very wise look in his eyes, 
" Every bar of iron has passed under the 



HOME LETTEBS. 37 

hammer of Tubal Cain, and the play of 
' Hamlet ' is only a permutation of the 
alphabet." Another tries to make his pic- 
ture of the greatness and magnificence of 
the universe more effective by telling of 
*'the moon in mad waltz with the earth, 
whirling through space." 

That may be what artists call fine 
grouping, or touching up the picture with 
a high light ; but to me it was a very un- 
true and disagreeable statement, suggestive 
only of two frisky young planets dashing 
lawlessly around and putting their seniors 
in great danger. A promising young 
clergyman, wishing for a large and cul- 
tivated parish, lately preached a sermon 
on beauty, of which he gave this definition, 
" Beauty is the integral and equitable 
development of diverse differences." I do 
not say that this is nonsense, but it is very 
pretentious and very ridiculously dressed 
sense. Sundays, one hears a deal of 
vague talk about angels, their employ- 
ments, and interests in us mortals. If any 



38 HO:dE LET TEES. 

man knows about angels, what they are 
or what they do, there would be unspeaka- 
ble pleasure in listening to him ; but, for 
most men, the veil which hangs between 
this world and the next is impenetrable, 
and it seems a great waste of time to dog- 
matize or sentimentalize about that which 
is on the other side of it. Grace Green- 
wood advocated a wise letting alone of 
children. I wish she had gone a little 
farther and spoken of a wise letting alone 
of grown-up people. There is a kind of 
interference constantly {Practised in families 
that does not spring from unkindness, but 
from thoughtlessness. Still, it is useless 
and annoying. Some persons are always 
advising a change of plan in unimportant 
matters in which they have no interest. 
If one proposes a morning walk the advice 
is to wait until afternoon ; if one rides in 
the golden sunset light or the early eve- 
ning, some one is sure to wonder that you 
did not go earlier, for noon is the best 
time ; if one minded one's friends one 



HOME LETTEJR8. 39 

would seldom go out, or do anything not 
stupid. It is infinitely better for people 
to do as they like when what they like 
is good in itself, and does harm to no 
one. 

There is a great deal of complaint now- 
a-days of the gossip, the low tone and the 
frivolity of society. Now, almost every 
one cares for what is good and beautiful, 
would rather hear of fine things than to 
talk mean ones ; I do not believe that two 
persons together often talk nonsense, — it 
takes three or more to do that. No one 
offers his best unless he is sure of sym- 
pathy ; and I believe that the noblest 
thought, the most delicious fun and 
sparkling wit have been given to but one 
listener. 

I know that Yankees are ridiculed for 
asking innumerable and impertinent ques- 
tions, but I do think they tell a great deal 
more than the}^ ask. They have very little 
indolent repose about them, and their rest- 
lessness overflows in personal talk. It is 



40 HOME LETTERS. 

rather a pleasant failing, and those who 
travel only at home ought to be grateful 
for the variety and amusement, and, often- 
times, the sweetness and prettiness that it 
brings to them. 

Last Sunday was the Lily Sunday for 
the Unitarians. They keep it as the 
Catholics do Palm Sunday, only with less 
form. In one of the churches was a mag- 
nificent bunch of white garden lilies (if 
white flowers can be magnificent) and ap- 
propriate music ; and, in the other, a 
gorgeous show of scarlet field lilies and 
the golden grace of nodding ones. The 
lily season brings us the most beautiful 
combination of wild flowers that we have 
through the year, and the most beautiful 
combination that anybody has anywhere, 
with the exception of white orchids, car- 
dinal flowers, and butterfly weed, which 
August brings in some places. 

Let me tell you a little bit about Leices- 
ter, as a proof that country life is not 
monotonous. The ride there is always 



HOME LETTEBS. 41 

lovely ; and now the beauty of it is in the 
dancing life of the wild cherry and the 
chestnuts just coming into bloom. In the 
early morning I saw a landscape of perfect 
beauty. As far as I could see, the mist lay 
like a great grey sea, and the sharply-lined 
hills were like bold promontories, as it 
lifted and rolled against their sides, like 
surf against great rocks, then slowly dis- 
appeared ; the whole landscape was a 
brilliant green once more, lighted by the 
beautiful ponds which Leicester people 
have made for themselves. I don't know 
what else the factories turn out, but they 
have made ponds with marvellous taste 
and discretion. I had a long row in a 
graceful little boat, with young ladies for 
oarsmen, from which we came back to 
watch a game of base ball. All the play- 
ers were in charmingly picturesque cos- 
tumes, — light blue or pink breeches, with 
bright-colored rosettes at the knees, pink 
or white stockings, with low shoes, — all 
made the common costumes of the by- 



42 HOME LETTERS. 

standers look very ugly, and made one 
wish that gay colors were fashionable for 
men. So much for the pleasures of a 
chance little visit in a little town. Do you 
think they would have been more or larger 
if I had gone away a hundred miles and 
stayed a week? 

Don't let any newspaper or magazine 
notice induce you to read "Rutledge" by the 
announcement that "it is like 'Jane Eyre,' 
or that a Charlotte Bronte has arisen in 
America," or that it is the greatest novel 
of the age, or any similar flourish of 
trumpets. Perhaps you will think all this 
after you have read the book, and will toss 
up your own bonnet (have you got a hat?) 
for the queen of novelists ; but I do n't 
believe you will. The book is not great ; 
it is entertaining, and some people sit up 
all night to read it. It is full of incidents 
and accidents and all sorts of unnatural 
things ; the heroine is always in trouble 
and the hero is always appearing to help 
her out of it ; he is rich and proud and 



HOME LETTERS. 43 

stately, knows all her thoughts before she 
tells them, and divines all her secrets ; he 
hides his love for her under a thin veil of 
fatherliness, for he is forty and she is 
seventeen, and she willingly consents to 
be deceived by the flimsy pretence. He 
has great sorrows, which he confides to 
her ; he is moody and fascinating, makes 
her miserable, cross and snappish, and 
himself very stiff and jealous ; he is rude 
and cold when his heart is breaking for 
her, and she cries herself to sleep thinking 
about him : but, at last, all the snarled 
threads are made straight ; there are 
humble confessions, self-accusings, em- 
bracings and a wedding ; and so the novel 
is successfully accomplished. Is n't it 
strange that moodiness and absurd pride, 
and painful misunderstandings and an 
entire want of frankness make a novel 
attractive and popular, when, in real life, 
they are so disagreeable and vexatious? 
To be sure, they make men and women 
exciting companions ; and, perhaps, that 



44 HOME LETTERS. 

is their charm in a book, vou look on and 
watch their working without suffering from 
them yourself. I am not finding fault with 
the book, only with the praise it receives. 

The May number of the Atlantic has a 
story called '* Circumstance," by Miss 
Harriet Prescott. It is wonderful in its 
mastery over words. To many writers 
words are hard, inflexible blocks, and, 
according to the power of the architect, 
they are to be built into forms of strength 
and beauty ; but to her, words are what a 
violin is to its master, what a flute is to 
one who can give it a soul, an organ to the 
man who was born to play on it. This 
story is like marvellous music. The words 
quiver with pain or droop with weariness, 
or are cold with despair; and then, oh, 
they grow so rich and full with divine faith 
and trust, rise so serenely from the victo- 
rious soul that one no longer reads them, 
but every nerve feels them, and the heart 
presses itself against them as if they were 
human and could still their throbbings. 



HOME LETTEBS. 45 

I want you to read what Ruskin says 
about England ; only, please to read for 
England, United States. " No nation," he 
says, " has ever before declared boldly, by 
print and by word of mouth, that its relig- 
ion was good for show, but would not 
work. Over and over again nations have 
denied their gods, but they denied them 
bravely ; the Greeks jested at their religion 
and frittered it away in flatteries and fine 
arts ; the French refused theirs fiercely 
and tore down their altars. The question 
about God with both these nations was 
fairly put, though falsely answered. But 
we English say, * There is a Supreme 
Ruler, no question of it, only He cannot 
rule. His orders won't work. He will 
be quite satisfied with euphonious and 
respectful recognition of them.'" 

I had no conception of the absolute 
darkness which has covered our national 
mind until I began to come in collision 
with persons engaged in the study of 
commercial and political questions. The 



46 HOME LETTEBS. 

entire naivete and undisturbed imbecility 
with which I found them declaring that the 
laws of the Devil were the only practicable 
ones, and that the laws of God were 
merely a form of poetical language, passed 
all that I ever heard or read of mortal 
infidelity. I knew the "fool had said in 
his heart there was no God " ; but to hear 
him say, clearly, there is a foolish God, 
was something for which I was not pre- 
pared. The French had, indeed, for a 
considerable time, hinted much of the 
meaning in the delicate and compassionate 
blasphemy of their phrase, " le bon Dieu," 
but had never ventured to put it into 
precise terms. 



i860. 

Of course, you read " May in Rome," 
in the May number of the Atlantic^ and, 
of course, you wished you were there ; 



HOME LETTEBS. 47 

yet if you cared only for beauty of sky, 
tree and flower, you might be contented in 
Worcester, and forget Rome, — all but the 
acres of scarlet poppies on the Campagna ; 
I confess that the blaze of color dazzled 
me for a minute, but only for a minute, for 
I would not take all the poppies in the 
world, splendid as they are, in exchange 
for an apple orchard in blossom. I have 
seen a very small part of the world, but I 
know there can be nothing in the whole of 
it more beautiful than apple trees in May. 
Look at the great heaps of snowy white 
or of delicate pink, flecked with deepest 
crimson ; nothing but blossoms to be seen, 
no leaves, no twigs or trunk visible — 
only soft, rich masses of color and sweet- 
ness ; look at them against a clear blue 
sky ; hide yourself under the bending 
branches, and look up through them at 
the bits of burning blue, like sapphires 
scattered upon tinted sea-shells, and I 
think Roman poppies will fade from your 
mind and orange groves call you in vain. 



48 HOME LET TEES. 

Apple trees have some mysterious con- 
nection with lilacs, I think, for they are 
always neighbors, and charming neigh- 
bors, too. Lilacs are sturdy and honest, 
old-fashioned and hospitable, and wave 
their great purple plumes in the lightest 
breeze, and pour out floods of fragrance. 
Earlier spring flowers are more delicate, 
you must listen for their odor, but the 
smell of the lilac is like the wind among 
pine trees. 

May brings innumerable wonders : it 
fringes gray rocks with the scarlet and 
fine gold of the columbine ;, it covers the 
low oaks with graceful tassels, till they 
look like fountains forever falling in show- 
ers of golden spray ; it gives to the maple 
trees the keys which unlock the mysteries 
of color, and which put garnets and rubies 
to shame. 

Don't shrug your shoulders and talk 
about east winds and raw days. To be 
sure they do come sometimes, but the 
pleasant days are perfect, and I want to 



HOME LETTERS. 49 

like Worcester better than Rome, and 
want to make you like it better. Perhaps 
you will, if you idle away your afternoons 
as I do, with a friend who is like a bunch 
of apple blossoms, fresh and sweet; we 
spend a long time on a short walk ; we 
loiter among the lilacs, and we never grow 
tired of the lovely ponds (not ten minutes' 
walk away from our own doors), with their 
low, wooden bridges, their drooping wil- 
lows, their exquisite birches and musical 
pines. If you found so lovely a place 
two hundred miles away, you would rave 
about it, and people would tire themselves 
half to death going to see it, always forget- 
ting that 

" That is best, which lieth nearest." 

All out-of-door life is charming now ; 
and if you don't care to plunge into 
swamps for buckbeans and violets, or 
anon to dream away the hours on the 
pond shores, you may find Main Street 
to your taste and will run no risk of 
being thought tasteless. Main Street is 
5 



50 HOME LETTERS. 

very pretty and pleasant, shady and com- 
fortable, and there is abundant amusement 
in the posted bills, if you like that kind 
of literature. The illustrated posters are 
wonderful productions, and although the 
newspapers' stories name a monotony of 
women with dishevelled hair and uplifted 
daggers, there is sufficient variety to save 
from weariness in the circuses, menageries 
and negro minstrels. 



i860. 

The last weeks have been filled with 
news of battles won by our brave soldiers, 
and the noise of rejoicing bells and cannon 
that echo the victories. The Soldiers' 
Relief Society is to have a great tea 
party in Mechanics Hall to supply money 
for its work. In an old story the fairy 
godmother makes pearls and diamonds 
fall out of the mouth of her favorite 
child every time she speaks. The result 



HOME LETTEBS. 51 

of the great tea party will be still more 
magical, for it will transform what goes 
into the mouths of people to shirts, blan- 
kets, socks, towels, and all other things 
needed by the far away sufferers. The 
fairy godmother must have been blessing 
the evergreens with the gift of diamonds. 
How pretty they have been all the week. 
A few days ago, when the rapid thawing 
was checked by a cold west wind and the 
clear, bright, sunset light shone through 
the two little thick spruces at our door, 
they were like Christmas trees lighted as 
no other Christmas trees ever were. On 
each twig, even the very smallest, hung a 
clear, long, very sharp icicle, every one 
glowing like a flame. The trees were 
hung thickly with these inverted spires of 
blazing light, all the more brilliant in 
contrast with the dark green on which 
they shone. I have seen nothing prettier 
this long winter, not even the birds' nests 
at the Natural History Room in the new 
Library building, though they are as prett}^ 



52 n03IE LETTEBS. 

as anything can be, the little eggs such 
dainty bits of delicate color, that one feels 
sight and touch grow finer as one looks at 
them. Not alone to sight and touch do 
refining influences come. The Mendels- 
sohn Quintette Club gave a concert here 
last Tuesday ; I need not tell you how 
good it was ; when ear and heart can un- 
derstand the wonderful things the violin 
and violoncello do together, can translate 
their sweet strains of love and contentment, 
then we will confess the perfect education 
of one sense, and will ask our eyes to read 
us the same stories from the pink May 
flowers under great white-pine trees, or 
from the white blossoms of the bloodroot 
held firmly by their half unfolded, but still 
supporting leaves. 

Let me suggest to you, that if you have 
anything to do with public meetings that 
have for their object the clothing of con- 
trabands you should read the hymn, 

" Triumphant Zion lift thy head." 

The negroes have been called Canaan so 



HOME LETTEBS. 53 

long that it may be all right to call them 
Zion now. The lines that follow are, 

•' Put all thy beauteous garments on," &c. 

I don't mean to laugh about contrabands, 
and the men who are fighting for them, 
and the other men who can make their 
future glad by justice or doubly sad by 
faithlessness ; we can't be serious all the 
time. 



i860. 

If I were an artist, I would sketch the 
Worcester pictures, which the last week 
has brought to me. One of these would 
have been a perfect subject for Wilkie : a 
little low-roofed cottage ; a cosy kitchen, as 
clean as hands could make it ; a bright fire 
in the stove and a row of shining lamps 
on the shelf above ; a pet cat asleep on 
the floor*^ the windows shaded by a luxu- 
riant growth of geraniums and carnations ; 
an open door showing a glimpse of a 



54 HOME LETTEBS. 

parlor gay with its brilliant carpet and red 
chairs; and standing by the stove, a tall, 
active, elderly woman, with handsome 
features, the merriest laughter in her eyes 
and the cordial, kindly manner that made 
her guests sorry to leave her. She was 
quite alone with her dog and her cat, but 
we could see that she found them and her 
plants good company. 

Do you know my second picture of the 
blue pond, with the pine trees on its shore, 
the two wooden bridges and the woods 
beyond? Do you know the ducks there, 
that swim across the pond, land ungrace- 
fully, collect around you and press their 
broad bills under your feet, begging to be 
fed? They are handsome ducks and so 
friendly that you may stroke their glossy 
backs with your hand, and I have no 
doubt would stand quietly for their por- 
traits, if any one wished to paint them. 

My third picture is not '* still life," but 
it is the one beauty of these rough March 
days, namely, the passing over of the 



HOME LET TEH 8. 55 

short, violent storms very disrespectfully 
called " flurries." They come with a dark 
rush over Asnebumskit, looking heavy 
and cruel, as if they would blot out the 
sun forever, sweep across the plain, wrap 
Sunny Side in a blinding whirl of snow, 
roll the pond into waves that are almost 
white-capped, and hurry across the sky, 
carrying away hats, caps, veils and dignity 
in their wild flight, and before they have 
reached and climbed the eastern hills the 
pursuing, victorious sunlight is upon them, 
and for a little while there is blue sky and 
calmness, then the disbanded troops of 
winter gather again, for a hopeless battle, 
to be followed by another despairing flight. 
The last week one has needed to read 
no books of history or romance, for the 
newspapers have been full of heroism and 
daring adventure, of noble self-sacrifice 
and Christian endurance unsurpassed in 
the world's history. Read Mr. Hinton's 
account of Stevens and Hazlitt, read the 
grave, tender, manly letters of Watson 



56 H03IE LET TEES. 

Brown, and you will confess that never 
before was the world so rich in heroic 
natures. In one of Watson Brown's last 
letters to his wife are these memorable 
words, " I can but commend you to your- 
self and friends should I never see you 
again." Truly might Whittier have said 
of these, 

*' Life hath its regal natures jet, 
True, tender, brave and sweet." 

The daily papers have given us Wendell 
Phillips's magnificent speech. It is good 
to read it so soon after Mr. Seward's ; good 
to compare the clear crystallization of 
Seward's intellect with the glow and fire 
of Phillips, and strange to see how unlike 
they are, and with what different weapons 
they meet their common foe. Years ago, 
the great men who launched the Republic, 
took Satan on board as a passenger with 
the agreement that he should stay in his 
narrow berth, and an understanding that 
he should have only a short sail and leave 
the ship. They forgot his craftiness or un- 



HOME LETTEBS. 57 

derrated his weight. He was a dangerous 
passenger. He has possessed himself of 
all the state-rooms, has bribed the captain, 
and himself furnished a large portion of the 
crew, and has so loaded the ship with his 
retinue and his personal property that she 
is in danger of sinking. Mr. Seward and 
Mr. Phillips both want to save her, but 
how? Mr. Seward proposes to urge Satan 
back into his narrow quarters, to share 
power with him until he can be persuaded 
to yield entirely, or to yield without vio- 
lence to overwhelming force. Mr. Phillips 
sees no hope of that good time coming ; 
sees that the past does not promise such a 
future, and so proposes to throw Satan 
overboard at once. What matter if the 
struggle is fierce, if all the timbers strain, 
and there seems to be danger of parting 
amidships. The ship is built in compart- 
ments ; there can be no wreck, and when 
the struggle is over, when the ship is clean 
from stem to stern, when there is no crev- 
ice where oppression can lurk, then those 



58 HOME LETTERS. 

on board will stand silent in their deep 
sadness, seeing before them the noble 
peace which will follow purity, while a 
shout of triumph goes up from every heart 
the world over. 



LETTERS TO THE WORCESTER 
SPY, 



BY 



" Our Regular Boston Correspondent," 



BETWEEN 



1869 AND 1888. 



^ 



BOSTON LETTERS. 

1869. 

The widening of streets is taking away 
so many old landmarks that one feels 
moved to notice those that remain. Father 
Taylor's "Bethel" has a unique interest. 
There sailors gathered for years to listen 
to the quaint, persuasive and warm-hearted 
preacher. On pleasant Sundays, he was 
seen in the pulpit after he was too feeble 
to preach, a touching figure, and more 
impressive in his silence than his young 
and vigorous colleague. Behind the pul- 
pit was a large picture, representing a full 
rigged ship, painted from an old East 
Indian merchantman, with sails all spread 
and colors flying, just coming home from 
a prosperous voyage. The sea is rough, 
the wind is strong, the clouds are gather- 
ing, the quiet, peaceful harbor is in sight, 
but the ship may not reach it, for near 



62 BOSTON LETTERS. 

rocks threaten her and dangerous preci- 
pices frown upon her ; a pilot-boat has put 
out from the harbor and is ready to guide 
her, an anchor hovers from the sky to lead 
to safety and far above, through a rift in 
the clouds, a white-robed angel looks 
down upon the prosperous ship, so near to 
safety, so near to destruction ; will she 
take a pilot on board, will she sail with 
Christ into salvation, or go to wreck on 
the ice-shores of unbelief? That is the 
question always asked, that is the hand- 
writing always to be seen on the " Bethel" 
wall ; an interpreter is always there to 
make it clear, and sailors to be moved 
by it. 



1869. 

John Brown, born in 1800, came of 
Puritan ancestry and belonged to a sim- 
ple, honorable, hard-working. New Eng- 
land family, active in mind and body, of 



BOSTON LETTERS. 63 

the stuff of which soldiers and martyrs are 
made, and he was both soldier and martyr. 
Sarah and Angelina Grimke belonged to 
an aristocratic, exclusive, slave-holding 
family of Charleston, South Carolina. 
They were born to wealth, fashion and 
idleness. John Brown remembered how 
at five years of age he lived among the 
Indians in Ohio and was friendly with 
them, and how at six he began to be a 
rambler in the wild, new country. He 
was a tender-hearted little fellow, and 
says that he was in mourning for a year 
at the loss of a pet squirrel. At about the 
same time, the little five year old Sarah 
Grimke, having seen a slave woman cruel- 
ly whipped, ran away from her luxurious 
home, and was found by her nurse on one 
of the wharves begging a sea captain to 
take her to some place where such dread- 
ful things did not happen. The Grimkes 
were not harmonious, did not get on well 
together. Sarah and Angelina were un- 
like the others, and did not hesitate to 



64 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

reproach and argue with them for their 
wicked treatment of negroes and their 
general frivolity. This made the rest of 
the family cross and angry ; and the way 
was not smooth for the young sisters, who 
had varied and passionate religious experi- 
ences, and became ascetic in their own 
habits, burning their novels, using their 
fine laces to stuff their pillows, refusing to 
join in the amusements of the family, or 
to share in their luxuries. At last, the two 
sisters left the South and became Anti 
Slavery writers and speakers at the North. 
Their charities and the fact that they were 
southern ladies gave them a marked place 
among the early abolitionists. They were 
wonderfully brave and earnest women, fol- 
lowing faithfully their own convictions of 
right, and bearing ridicule, taunts and 
abuse from their own family and their 
friends, especially the Quakers. Their 
lives were full of work, but in many ways 
sad and depressing until Angelina mar- 
ried Theodore Weld. The sisters were 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 65 

never separated. They tried the various 
reforms of that day of queer experiments ; 
they wore the Bloomer dress until it be- 
came intolerable even to their unworldi- 
ness ; they were vegetarians, ate their food 
cold, cooked only once a week in order to 
save time ; read while the rice and hominy 
were boiling ; put their servants, whom 
they took out of charity, on a perfect social 
equality with themselves ; deprived them- 
selves everything but the bare necessities 
of life in order to give to the poor. 

And John Brown followed the dictates 
of his conscience. He was the central 
figure in the tumultuous years when slav- 
ery and freedom fought for the possession 
of Kansas, when the days were filled with 
irregular and daring adventure, wilder and 
more exciting even than the conflicts after 
war was declared. And then came Har- 
per's Ferry, the story that everybody 
knows, when John Brown gave himself 
and his sons to death that the slaves might 

be free. 
6 



66 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

Mr. Sanborn in his book tells all their 
heroic tragedy in John Brown's own words 
and letters ; showing that it was no im- 
petuous and unconsidered act, but the 
deliberate work of a grave, sane man, who 
believed he was called of God to over- 
throw slavery and was willing to die in 
the wreck. Twenty years before, he had 
a definite plan for attacking slavery ; he 
did it when he thought the time had come. 
No one should condemn him until he has 
read the life and letters which Mr. San- 
born has edited ; until he has learned the 
tenderness as well as the austerity of the 
soldier and martyr, and recognized the 
one purpose of John Brown's life, — a pur- 
pose never set aside, but carried out re- 
ligiously and unflinchingly to the end. 
The Grimke family at the South suffered 
severely from the war and were reduced 
to poverty. Then the northern sisters 
showed all the love that had been refused, 
and returned good for evil. In 1868, Mrs. 
Weld read in the Anti-Slavery Standard 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 67 

a notice of an address delivered by one of 
the colored students at Lincoln University, 
named Francis Grimke, and found him to 
be her brother Henry's son. 

Such biographies are good reading. In 
them is the very elixir of life. They give 
added strength to the strong, who are 
working in gladness and sunshine, and 
they lift out of weariness and depression 
the weak, who have dropped by the way- 
side ready to give up the battle. 



1870. 

We have had hardly a taste of winter 
yet, but warnings of spring are coming 
everywhere. We had a great snow-storm 
last week, and the Common was a marvel 
of beauty. Soft snow covered every bit 
of the wire fence, no footsteps had broken 
the smooth surface, and the sky was a 
lovely moist gray, foretelling a warm rain. 
There was no glitter, nor an atom of ice 



68 BOSTON LET TEES. 

to be seen, everything looked warm and 
light. The trees moved lazily, as they 
do on summer afternoons, but not enough 
to shake off the snow ; no rustling or 
murmuring as with the summer wind ; no 
snapping or creaking with which winter 
protects against the breeze that cuts them 
like a thousand knives and flings the bro- 
ken twigs in derision at their feet, but 
slow, graceful motion and utter silence. 
It seemed like enchantment ; one held one's 
breath to listen, and started when a flake 
touched the cheek, as if touched by the 
finger of the genius of the storm. The 
Common looked limitless ; the snow was 
bewildering and covered all landmarks ; 
and it seemed as if Beacon St. Mall 
stretched far away for miles with its arches 
of wonderful beauty and its floor of spot- 
less white. It was the best thing winter 
can do, and I am sure we shall not have 
another such display. Then came a few 
days of fast and furious sleighing and of 
fearful peril to pedestrians from snow- 



BOSTON LETTEB8. 69 

slides, thundering and crashing all day 
and booming through the night like keen 
flashes of artillery. But now we have 
warm days again, and shop windows are 
hideous with placards urging people to 
buy at less than cost, as things must be 
sold within a few days, while yet the 
black velvet suits heavy with Russian 
sable have hardly been seen, and on that 
account we might wish for a month of 
cold weather yet. 

Boston women will soon be known on 
the public platform as men are, and 
will excite no more curiosity. Thursday 
morning there was a hearing at the State 
House on Woman Suffrage ; the delega- 
tion large, and too much said, as usual ; 
some of the arguments were strong, but 
uninteresting ; one speech was lengthened 
and injured by using the worn-out his- 
torical argument that women have ruled 
kingdoms and ruled them well ; of course 
Queen Elizabeth was dragged in, false, 
fickle and fiery, but made authority, be- 



70 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

cause she knew how to select good minis- 
ters and draw great men to her court. 
Mrs. Livermore's speech was capital. 
She is a true orator, using argument, 
sentiment and satire, wit and wisdom with 
admirable art. She softens, but never 
weakens, her argument; with pathos, at 
precisely the right moment of tenderness, 
she drives home her argument. She is 
the only effective speaker in the cause of 
woman suffrage, excepting Lucy Stone. 
One in listening to her appeal, thinks of 
the prayers of Thetis to her sister Juno : 
the goddess yielded, smiled, poured sweet 
nectar from the jar and joined the " inex- 
tinguishable laughter of the gods." Our 
modern Juno will hardly do that ; she will 
never yield, and only after she has won 
the victory will she join the laughter of 
the gods. 

Miss Phelps's " Hedged In " is sug- 
gestive. It will make its readers think 
of the strange difference between the lives 
hedged in by ignorance and poverty and 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 71 

sin, so that no path out into the light, no 
honest work can be found, and those so 
hedged in by culture, love and watchful 
tenderness that they know neither the 
sight or the sound of sin ; it will make 
them think of the sin of injustice and of 
judging these two lives by the same rule ; 
it will make all thoughtful persons con- 
sider their own duty to the girls who have 
gone astray, and it will make them feel 
more strongly than ever the difference 
between real and professed Christianity. 
The book is genuine and noble ; and never 
does tenderness and pity for the sinner 
make the author forget the fearful and 
inevitable consequences of sin. 

The anniversary of the Boston Massa- 
cre was depressing, as some one took the 
opportunity to cast down and trample upon 
the historical fact that Crispus was a hero 
and a martyr. Now it turns out that poor 
Crispus was nobody, or rather everj^- 
body, for he could claim the quartering 
of every race on the continent; a brawler 



72 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

by profession ; was hit and died in the 
way of his trade, and has no claim to 
martyrdom. Well, it is sad to have our 
inexorable knowledge swept away and our 
old friends. I am afraid George Wash- 
ington will go next, and his little hatchet 
and the classic Virginia apple tree will 
by and by yield to the blows of historical 
critics, as the more famous one of Eden 
has already yielded. 



1870. 

The famous picture of the Battle of 
Gettysburg is exceedingly interesting to 
the whole community, if we can judge by 
the numbers that flock to see it. I went 
with all the rest of Boston, expecting to 
see a bloody mass of men, horses, horrors 
and smoke, without beauty, and wonderful 
only for the industry shown by the artist. 
That was my idea of a great battle picture, 
and I was astonished at the real pleasure 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 73 

the first glance gave me ; a calm sky, a 
long, irregular line of hills on the horizon, 
with tents softened by distance and hazy 
from the smoke and dust of battle ; the 
foreground crowded with soldiers, and 
mounted officers gesticulating eagerly or 
pointing to some portion of the army ; a 
wrecked caisson on the left, with the 
horses struggling in their harness, and the 
solid columns of the men, with tattered 
flags waving, stretching on till the eye 
ceased to follow them. In the very front 
of the picture, that is, in the rear of the 
army, are wounded and dead men, the 
ground strewn with hats, caps, guns, blan- 
kets and knapsacks ; yet the horrors are 
not made conspicuous. This is my first 
impression of the picture. I don't know 
how to criticise it, don't even know if the 
criticism I have made is just ; the dead 
men may be out of drawing, the mounted 
men may be wooden, the horses may be 
faulty ; I can't tell, for I never saw men or 
horses under such circumstances and don't 



74 BOSTON LETTEB8, 

know how they should look, but I am sure 
the picture will interest almost everybody, 
and will repay one for giving it a half- 
hour out of even a busy day. 



1870. 

Fairs have crowded and hurt each other 
for the past month. It seems as if this 
extravagant and laborious way of raising 
money would never be outgrown. We 
can only hope that when women have 
their rights and sin is abolished^ the blun- 
ders of society will be taken in hand by 
some reform club or social science asso- 
ciation, and fairs will be sloughed off as 
slavery has been and the subjection of 
women. Just now, however, one evil is 
used as a weapon with which to attack 
another, and the Woman's Suffrage Bazaar 
fills Music, Bumsted and Horticultural 
Halls with its attractions ; this great under- 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 75 

taking, so widely advertised and so faith- 
fully worked for, excites more than local 
interest and has some peculiarities, which 
relieve the usual monotony of flags, 
shields, green trimmings, which grow 
pathetically dry and dull, and food, mis- 
called "refreshments." The first large 
motto attracting attention is at the Ply- 
mouth table, "The coming woman will 
do housework " ; and here the demand for 
kitchen aprons, etc., far exceeds the sup- 
ply, suggesting that the woman already 
come does housework, whatever the woman 
of the future may do. Having sacrificed 
at the altar of household duty, you are 
next called to that of public work by a 
notification of voting for Speaker in the 
House of Representatives, one of the can- 
didates being a woman. Gentlemen are 
not excluded from the polls, but are 
requested to " vote early and often," as 
usual. This was a poor joke when it was 
new, and worn threadbare so long ago 
one wonders at a fresh, bright cause using 



76 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

the rags of it today. However, it makes 
a good deal of fun, and more than one 
gallant and independent gentleman has 
** bolted," giving his vote for neither of 
the candidates, but for the persuasive 
young lady who stood at the polls. Across 
one side of the hall stretch the good words 
of Theodore Parker, " Woman's work 
like charity begins at home, then like 
charity goes everywhere." In the place 
of honor, wreathed with flags, are these 
words of Goethe, in German text, thought- 
fully translated, "The eternal womanly 
draws us on." 

A capital picture has been on exhibition 
at Childs'. A squirrel coming down to 
drink at a little pool, and pushing himself 
under a low branch of maple, with gor- 
geous leaves whose reflection makes a rich 
coloring in the water ; he has pushed his 
head under and paused, ready to retreat if 
there is any danger, his eyes bright, his 
air alert. A great magnificent leaf hides 
a part of his body and shows well against 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 11 

the handsome bushy tail of the little fel- 
low. Altogether it is a fascinating picture 
and makes one remember many an autumn 
walk, many an armful of maple boughs, 
many a delicious hour by pond or wood or 
stream, and many a squirrel skurrying 
along the irregular stone walls and hiding 
himself in the trees. 



^ 1871. 

Our Horticultural Exhibition has been 
most interesting. There was a stand of 
roses from the garden of Francis Park- 
man ; they were simply delicious ; one 
could not help thinking of the famous 
Persian rose garden in which Saadi was 
once benighted and where he was inspired 
to write his '* Gulistan," saying, " I will 
form a book of roses, which will delight all 
beholders ; this rose garden will flourish 
forever." Dr. Parkman is a historian ; 
but the results of his faithful labor and 



78 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

laborious research, in the early history of 
America, are told in a style that rivals a 
rose garden in richness, variety and har- 
mony of color, and with a sentiment as 
sweet as the perfume of flowers : we need 
no longer look to the East and the past 
for a rose garden, when a poet lives and 
does work which is not transitory. 

I have been in a small town nestling in 
the mountains, dark with pine and hem- 
lock and beautiful with spring flowers. 
The region is rich in lakes. Poultney 
River pauses here to take breath, and then 
flings itself over a wild, rocky precipice in 
two magnificent falls ; the country is full 
of lovely places, almost unvisited. It is 
all broken up b}^ slate quarries, and purple 
and green slate make partly the coloring 
of the landscape. Here is a colony of 
Welsh workmen, and very interesting they 
are ; all read and write ; all sing ; have 
fine voices ; and great beauty of face rot 
uncommon. They have annual literary 
festivals, at which prizes for the best con- 



BOSTON LETTERS. 79 

tributions are given ; these are on a great 
variety of subjects. The poets and essay- 
ists are men who work in the mines and 
quarries ; they are clannish, and have a 
strong national feeling, but they make 
good citizens. Of the same class and 
character are many of the men in our 
anthracite coal regions. 



1871. 

It is strange to feel how much of lovely 
Sunday quietness creeps even into the 
heart of a busy city. This morning the 
old graveyard on which we look out was 
as sweet and still as any country church- 
yard ; birds were singing ; the early soft 
foliage is thick enough to hide the houses 
on the other side ; the singing of the choir 
in a neighboring church came, softened by 
distance, through our open windows ; the 
air was fragrant with the first blossoming 



80 BOSTON LETTERS 

lilacs, that most country-like of perfumes, 
full of remembrances of old gardens and 
peaceful back doorsteps where we used to 
sit for hours making dainty ornaments by 
stringing lilac-blossoms ; the illusion of 
being in the country was strengthened 
when a child's voice, full of delight and 
desire, said, "Oh, there's laylocks, did 
you know it? " What playthings the trees 
used to fling down to us, and the flowers 
offer us in the old gardens ; what a mine 
of delight was the Balm of Gilead tree ; 
how the horse-chestnuts daily provided 
fresh ornaments for our roomy baby-houses 
in the great, mysterious garret ; how we 
furnished our dolls' tables with beautiful and 
fantastic tea-sets made of poppies gone to 
seed, and our dolls themselves with dainty 
mirrors, which grew abundantly in the thick 
border of " Devil in the Bush": how we 
gathered cheeses from the luxuriant Robert 
Run-Away that with exquisite blue flowers 
covered the bank where the sweet-briers 
had their roots ! We found everything we 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 81 

wanted, fresh every day, and ours without 
money and without price ; how we wasted 
and experimented and flung away, yet 
missed nothing from our generous store ; 
and how now the scent of the lilacs has 
stirred the old memories I 



1871. 

In the exhibition of Phoenician art are 
several colored heads finely preserved ; 
one priest of Venus, a dove with out- 
stretched wings sculptured upon his cap ; 
another fine head is wreathed in boldly 
cut leaves in high relief, and has beard, 
lips and eyes colored red. Strong, kindly 
faces these priests' ; not beautiful, like 
Apollo or Mercury, but pleasant to look 
at. The finest, a priest with drapery, 
heavy and graceful, falling in almost 
straight folds ; the right arm bare, hang- 
ing out at the side ; the fingers lightly 
holding some plant ; a scarf twined about 
7 



82 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

the head ; the figure like a Roman 
emperor ; this is two thousand years old. 
Dr. Rimmer has a large picture of Cupid, 
relating his adventures to Venus. She 
rests slightly on one arm. What words 
can describe the coloring of the flesh ! It 
is like a gorgeous sunset, and pales the 
crimson bars that are painted with sunset 
background of Cupid ; marvellously varie- 
gated shading into deepening red saflron 
tints ; it is glowing, it may be goddess-like, 
but it is not human. Venus emerged from 
the sea, it is said; perhaps she was really 
born from the Red Sea, went through a pre- 
historic canal to the Mediterranean, and 
remained true to her native color. Cupid 
is a lively child, with outstretched wings, 
quiver and sandals, talking with great 
animation to his languid mother. 

Judge Russell, on board school-ship, 
told the boys that Dickens made a little 
speech, which hangs framed there today, 
*' Boys, do all the good you can and don't 
make a fuss about it." Dickens, said 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 83 

Judge Russell, was the true friend of man ; 
he made no fuss about doing good ; he 
made no demands for hearers as his just 
due ; but he belonged to the class of whom 
we read that they heard with surprise, 
"Come, ye blessed of my Father," and 
wondered when they had done such ser- 
vice for their Lord ; and only in the light 
of the answer, " Inasmuch as ye have done 
it unto one of the least of these have ye 
done it unto me," did they see the beauty 
and the worth of their own lives. This 
gives merely a hint of the way Judge 
Russell spoke of Dickens, his earnestness 
and tenderness of manner, for he loved the 
man of whom he told. I cannot show you 
faces of the one hundred boys, listening 
with breathless interest ; it was a !^trange 
and touching scene ; Dickens himself must 
have looked upon it all with pleasure ; the 
large low school-room, open to the fresh 
sea air ; the books ; the comfortable desks ; 
the boys turned aside from the paths of 
sin and shame brought here, instead of 



84 BO ST ox LETTERS. 

being taken to a dirty demoralizing jail, 
to be taught by competent teachers, who 
believed it was worth while to make good 
men of them. The school-ship must be 
infinitely better for them than jails or 
houses of correction. 



1871. 

The Art Club exhibition is considered 
satisfactory, I believe. There is a won- 
derful and very unattractive picture by 
Allston much admired by connoisseurs, 
and an exquisite beach by Gay, to be 
admired by everybody. A lovely sky, 
a cool stretch of sandy beach, a blue sea, 
with a delicate crest of foam on each little 
wave as it breaks on the shore,, make a 
delicious picture, full of beauty for the 
eye, of music for the ear; for you can 
hear the low, restful murmurs of the song 
of love, which the sea is singing to the 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 85 

patient, waiting shore, and of dreams 
for the fancy. Looking at the lovely, 
lonely scene, one cannot help thinking of 
Thoreau's poem, 

" My life is like a stroll upon the beach," 

and repeating the last lines, 

" I have but few companions on the shore. 

They scorn the strand, who sail upon the sea; 
Yet oft I think the ocean they sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me." 



1872. 

The conversation of Bostonians, their 
way of taking life hard, the lack of fun 
and playfulness in conversation, are pro- 
verbial, and excite admiration or ridicule 
according to the taste of the critic. If one 
will withdraw for a few weeks from out- 
door life and listen to their thoughtfulness, 
their desire for reform, their habitual 
dealing with large and interesting subjects 



SQ BOSTOX LETTERS. 

both to men and women, by people who 
have not the slightest personal interest in 
them, is very striking. Education is a 
favorite topic, and it sometimes seems as 
if nothing ever said in public was half as 
good, about these varied interests ; one is 
exercised about our city improvements ; 
one has wonderful tales to relate of Euro- 
pean cities, densely populated, which have 
been thoroughly purified by the opening 
of parks, etc. ; one talks of street rail- 
roads ; another is disturbed at the narrow- 
ness of our streets ; and others argue for 
more comfortable communication with the 
suburbs ; a pretty, exquisitely dressed 
woman is anxious for the supply of pure 
milk ; she boards and the milk of the 
boarding-house is all right, but then other 
people haven't pure milk and she weeps 
with those who weep ; and so has an ardent 
interest in the milk association, which is our 
latest reform. Opinions vary about woman 
suffrage, but withal Bostonians are not 
wholly given over to the practical. An 



BOSTON LET TEES. 87 

encouraging account of city missions may 
be quite driven from the mind by the report 
of a lecture on evolution, or the good of 
science or positive philosophy ; a charming 
woman full of tenderness and affection, 
amid many cares of home and children, 
finds time for art and literature ; one is exer- 
cised to get some disregarded law set right, 
and is searching for an old Latin book, 
which brings to light many interesting 
things. The needs of the shiftless poor 
are always in evidence ; however, there is 
some room for light talk about dress and 
fashions, for the confessions of happy, 
tragic or romantic love affairs and for the 
discussion of personal dislikes or prejudices. 
So the weeks go on, new interests crowd 
old ones out of the way, but conversation 
is always varied and full of life. I believe 
there is only one thing we don't hear 
about. Nobody brings a report of the 
way the pussy-willows are coming out, or 
rejoices over promising buds in sheltered 
places. No skater has been lured by noon 



88 BOSTON LETTERS. 

sunshine to the shores of lake or pond to 
come back with treasures of moss or ever- 
green. If we want a bit of moss, we pay 
a fabulous price for it ; or earth to fill a 
flower-pot, it is weighed out by the pound 
and put in a paper-bag like the nicest of 
groceries. Habit has accustomed us to 
wired flowers and we know it is useless to 
put a bouquet in water, that rust and not 
freshness will be the result ; and now even 
violets go wired in their dainty little moss 
baskets. 



1872. 

Anniversary week is over, with its scores 
of meetings, its hundreds of speeches, its 
tangled web of resolutions, caucuses, quar- 
rels, reverence, gravity, money-getting, re- 
ports of the past and projects of the future. 
In this Babel of confused tongues there 
was real earnestness, a few flashes of elo- 
quence, fewer sparkles of wit, a light 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 89 

ballast of common sense, and an undertone 
of discontent. On the last week of May 
Boston is a kind of harbor, into which a 
fleet of all kinds of reformatory, religious 
and charitable crafts come to give out of 
their year's voyaging and to refit for a new 
cruise. It is not wholly a harmonious 
fleet ; not all the ships will be officered 
well or well manned ; they do not always 
come into port greatly ; they cannot all find 
anchorage. Right into the midst of all 
this mental and spiritual turmoil swept a 
gorgeous procession, with waving banners, 
floating plumes, dancing pennants, cloth- 
ing of black velvet and silver, scarlet and 
gold, white and blue ; bands of music so 
close together that the dying notes from 
one floated into the next ; and for days 
and nights the Free Masons, the G. A. R. 
and the Militia filled the streets wdth a gay 
spectacle, and brought a momentary sense 
of release and pleasure into the monotony 
of the tired laborers of the machines of 
the anniversary meetings. 



90 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

In one of the old graveyards this last 
Memorial day, nothing could be prettier or 
more pathetic than the picture, where one 
or two old soldiers are buried ; all the 
other graves are half-sunken and moss- 
covered, and here came a few women 
dressed in black, where last year's flags 
still drooped and last year's immortelles 
still hung ; a few of the Grand Army vete- 
rans stood with uncovered heads and for a 
moment "listened underneath the postern 
green," laid fresh flowers and whispered 
words soft and sweet ; a band of singers, 
a strain of music and the graveyard was 
once more closed. A simple and touching 
remembrance, and seemed to belong to the 
old place. 

*' Out through the gate of Death je have passed 
into calm." 



1872. 

The Indian chiefs have departed. They 
have seen civilization, and have gone 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 91 

home to tell about it. They yielded in 
some degree to the seductions of civilized 
costume, but it was not becoming. They 
were treated with great courtesy, and made 
a pleasant impression upon all who saw 
them, and indulged in an ardor of feeling 
not expected in the proverbially reserved 
Indians. Their speeches were interesting, 
and it was curious to note the difference 
between their few and simple ideas, and 
their limited range of words of even ordi- 
nary white speakers. The chiefs knew 
they had been wronged and said so. For 
many days the city has rung with boasting 
self-gratulation. Great are the ideas and 
the charities of New England ; how free, 
how large are we, how noble ! Look at 
our connections, our institutions ; listen to 
our talk ; let the rest of the world listen 
and learn ; and before the psean has died 
away, we hear the deep pathos of Indian 
voices, like a chorus, " you have lied to 
us ; your talk is indeed good, but you 
have stolen from us and broken all our 



92 BOSTON LETTERS. 

treaties." The simple directness of their 
speeches was very effective. Then Wen- 
dell Phillips spoke. Never was a more 
picturesque scene on any platform. Phil- 
lips, so fine and graceful, so serene in his 
audacity, so gracious in his arrogance, 
the embodiment of moral and intellectual 
power, and near him that group of heavi- 
ly built, strangely dressed, dark skinned 
men, with stolid faces framed in masses of 
raven hair which fell over their shoulders, 
while stretching back to the organ was a 
sea of intense faces, pleasant and curious. 
The chiefs were guests of the Massachu- 
setts Indian Commission, who entertained 
them generously. Now they are gone and 
we wait for the next sensation. 



1872. 

Boston is a huge seething, bubbling, 
steaming cauldron, in which something 
called the " Peace of the World " has been 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 93 

cooking for fifteen days and will cook for 
four more. America was put in first, 
when the international kettle was clean 
and bright, with plenty of room. She 
went in singing Old Hundred, waving the 
stars and stripes ; then England followed 
with '' God Save the Queen," and Madame 
Rudersdorff'; we thought the kettle boiled 
and sang then, and that peace must be 
almost done. I came away just as France 
was to be thrown in, and only heard of the 
madness that grew and grew as Germany 
followed, and one after the other, Austria 
and Prussia were added to the unequalled 
soothing syrup, stirred continually by the 
magic wand of cooks accomplished in their 
line. Today Ireland goes in strong, prob- 
ably the largest mass of one kind that has 
been added, and I despair of describing 
the result. There is an absolutely fright- 
ful boiling over, but no matter, the mixture 
grows thicker and the world's wounds are 
to be healed by it; only a little more and 
it will be done ; but Italy is yet to be 



94 BOSTON LETTEBS, ' 

Stirred in ; tomorrow and tlie next, one 
more portion of America will be needed, 
and then a final portion of all the nations. 
The Fourth of July will be devoted to 
violent stirring and flavoring with gun- 
powder, and after that those who have 
lived through the turmoil may at least hope 
for peace. 

Away from all this, we went to the 
quietest of farmhouses, near one of the 
quietest of New Hampshire's villages, 
nestling in a green and beautiful valley, 
surrounded by high hills, among which 
Kearsarge, with its ever-changing colors 
and its mountain glory, stands like a king. 
The village is gradually lessening in popu- 
lation, but still retains a good deal of life ; 
and like most old country towns is rich in 
interesting people and queer histories. A 
mile or more from the village, on what 
was once a country road, but is now 
overgrown with a wealth of vines, delicate 
roses, luxuriant ferns, with the richest and 
densest young oaks and maples crowding 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 95 

into it, is an old and utterly abandoned 
graveyard ; it does not seem neglected ; it 
has long passed that stage and relapsed 
into woodland. There is no trace of path 
or cleared place ; the only signs of human 
beings ever entered there are the grave- 
stones, one large white rose-bush and a 
thicket of cinnamon roses, which, untrained 
for years, have grown and straggled and 
tangled as they would, but have such a 
mass of sweet and deep-colored blossoms 
as I never saw before. Year after year 
the pine needles have fallen on the graves 
and now, through the soft red carpet, 
maples are pushing their pretty leaves ; 
great clumps of gigantic ferns have 
grown ; partridge berries wander and 
mark their path with glowing red ; and 
the bright mosses light up the grey. It is 
impossible to describe the peacefulness, 
the beauty, the irresistible charm of the 
place. Most of the stones are old ; the 
epitaphs are few and of the simplest. 
There is nothing of the pretension which 



96 BOSTOX LETTERS. 

graveyard literature often has ; no cele- 
brating in elaborate verse the heroism or 
saintliness of the departed ; only a human 
tenderness, an expression of faith in an- 
other life, and an entreaty to those behind 
to ** love the Lord." On one stone, 
"Forget me not"; well known lines 
from old hymn books ; and only one 
attempt at epigram, as "When this life 
is o'er, she dies to live, or lives to 
die no more." There is one conventional 
weeping-willow and a wreath in the 
stifFest outline. But nature has supple 
mented all short-comings and with divine 
impartiality has covered all stones alike 
with ornament more rich and delicate 
than pencil or chisel ever made ; fine 
gray lichens, with shades of olive, cling 
to the dark slates and enrich them mar- 
vellously. We could not hear even the 
church-bells of the village ; the only 
sounds were the twitter of the birds, 
the hum of insects, and the cool surflike 
sough of the summer winds breathing 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 97 

their music through the tall pines with 
their delicious fragrance. 

In the still noon we sauntered along the 
grassy road by the side of a running 
brook, hiding under mossy arches or going 
half-asleep in dark, cool hiding-places ; 
then leaping out with a laugh and a 
flash to play in the sunshine. So we 
came back to the farmhouse, with its bor- 
ders of syringa, lilies and ambrosia, hon- 
eysuckle and lavender, its restless silver- 
leafed poplars, and best of all, its inmates. 
A family was there gathered of which 
New England might be proud. There 
were two men ; one seventy-nine, the other 
eighty years old ; both strong and active, 
full of interest in the present and rich 
in memories of the past. One has gained 
from the ups-and-downs of his fourscore 
years a noble serenity, a perfect sweetness 
of character, an optimism that never 
verges on fatalism or indifference, a dig- 
nity that is never self-conscious or cold ; 
the other has retained an almost boyish 



98 BO ST ox LET TEES. 

flow of spirits and love of fun, and is well 
known as one of the best of agricultural 
writers ; has a vivid, picturesque, almost 
dramatic way of talking, and a merriment 
in his blue eyes and expressive face that 
seems to belong to the very spirit of youth. 
Both of these men were as familiar with 
the politics of the days of Monroe, the 
younger Adams and Andrew Jackson, 
as with those of the present day ; both 
ardent federalists, both now republicans. 
They tell laughingly how timid children 
were terrified at the name of Napoleon 
Bonaparte, and shuddered at any strange 
noise, thinking he had come to capture 
the United States. They have seen many 
political parties grow, ripen and fall, many 
strange religious sects gain converts for 
awhile and then disappear ; and having 
seen all these things and pondered them, 
they believe the present time is better than 
the past, and that the future will be better 
still. The women in the famil}^ have all 
passed the time of youth and bloom ; have 



BOSTON LET TEES. 99 

known care and sorrow and the need of 
strict economy, but they have not learned 
complaint ; they have that wonderful thing 
called character, that unconscious supe- 
riority to circumstance, which takes with 
equal serenity poverty and abundance, 
obscurity and public praise. They can do 
almost anything, from cooking a dinner to 
reading and enjoying the books of the best 
French and German literature, which lie 
upon the table and divide the time with 
their household duties ; there were young 
people, too, in the house, and when the 
three generations gathered together, the 
conversation was as bright, rapid and 
witty as any ever printed in '' Table Talks." 



1872. 

One perfect summer morning we started 
for a visit to the Shaker village among the 
mountains. All the way the scenery was 
varied and charming, and much of it so 



100 BOSTOX LETTERS. 

novel and foreign we half forgot we were 
in New England. A long low farmhouse ; 
at one of the open windows a W3man of 
seventy perhaps ; a white cotton cap, with 
a high crown ; a dark handkerchief 
folded across her breast; a rosy, bare- 
legged child, with hair curly and as white 
as lint ; nobody else to be seen ; we 
thought them Swedes or Norwegians, but 
the stately grandmother was a figure long 
to be remembered. A turn in the road 
brings us in sight of the Shaker village, 
high among the hills ; here abundance of 
fresh air and no crowding. The rules on 
the placards seemed stiff and not encour- 
aging, but the welcome was friendly and the 
hospitality perfect. You will find among 
the Shakers all the difference you find 
among the best of the world's people : one 
is grave, sweet and saintlike ; another has 
all the grace and vivacity of a leader of one 
of the French salons, and her sixty years 
have not made her forget how to use her 
eyes ; she wears her soft white head-gear 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 101 

coquettishly, and carries her sunbonnet, 
lined with green silk, on her arm with a 
grace that any young belle might envy. 
What a vision of beauty was the elderess, 
as she showed us into our chamber, in 
the dim light ; a wrap of soft white cash- 
mere with a binding of sky-blue over her 
shoulders ; her dark hair half-hidden under 
a plain lace cap ; her splendid eyes full of 
tender light, as she told us what peace and 
contentment she found in her religion ; it 
was just like a scene in " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," as we sat in the chamber looking 
toward the east, whose name was peace. 
But they themselves confess that many 
Shakers find it hard to practice the perfect 
faithfulness and the spotless cleanliness 
their faith requires. The faces of the men 
were unattractive ; they looked careworn 
and indifferent. 



1872. 

I came home on Saturday in time to 
hear Professor Tyndall's third lecture be- 



102 BOSTON LETTEE8. 

fore the Lowell Institute. The small hall 
was crowded. Professor Tyndall is a man 
of medium height, slender in figure, with 
hair and beard just tinged with gray. 
His eyebrows are peculiar and very ex- 
pressive ; he is not handsome and yet seen 
as he sometimes is in silhouette against the 
brilliantly lighted screen, prepared for his 
experiments, the outline of his face and 
head is beautiful, fine and spirited. His 
manner is unstudied ; he is indeed uncon- 
scious of it, being wholly occupied with his 
subject. He begins with both hands on the 
table before him, leaning forward, but in a 
moment or two stands erect, and as the 
subject grows in interest he uses slight, 
swift, expressive gestures, with hand, with 
eyeglass ; sometimes with his whole body. 
Saturday evening, he had a good deal to 
say about Thomas Young, the founder of 
the undulatory theory of light, the great- 
est man in the department of science since 
the days of Newton. While speaking with 
deep reverence of Mr. Young's life and 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 103 

scientific work, Prof. Tyndall dropped into 
a slightly sing-song manner, not in the 
least unpleasant to hear or to see ; I say to 
see, for his body rocked in the regular 
undulations of his words. As soon as he 
turned to his experiments, he was alert 
and nervous again. When they do not 
come out right, he finds a reason for it, and 
makes the partial failure as instructive 
as entire success would have been. I 
never saw a pleasanter relation between 
a lecturer and his audience. He tells 
them just how long he shall keep them, 
and when he shall require close attention, 
or real hand-work, as he calls it, from 
them. Saturday evening he left off in the 
middle of exquisite experiments with soap- 
bubbles, and this evening he began at the 
very point where he left off, without a 
word to indicate that forty-eight hours 
had passed since his last sentence. Prof. 
Tyndall has found Boston air too pure for 
some of his experiments and has amused 
his audience by smoking it a little, in 



104 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

order to make it more like the London air 
in which he is accustomed to work. 



1872. 

It is very difficult to describe the im- 
pression made by Mr. Froude who gave 
his lecture here last Thursday. He is tall, 
spare, awkward, with legs and arms very 
much in his way ; his large, strong hands 
are an endless trouble to him ; he hides 
them nervously or defiantly, hooks them 
by their thumbs to his waistcoat armholes 
or spreads them out like a breastplate over 
his chest. His hair is dark and straight ; 
his eyes rather gloomy ; his mouth de- 
cidedly depressed at the corners ; his face 
strong, commanding, but not happy. He 
looked at first like a hard-working, power- 
ful Methodist minister, and a carelessly 
tied white cravat added to the resemblance. 
He was apparently unconscious of the 
prolonged applause which greeted his 
appearance, which was renewed as Judge 



BOSTON LETTEJRS. 105 

Hoar introduced him ; at least, he did not 
acknowledge it by even a bow. He began 
by asking in a tremulous voice the audience 
to come nearer lest they would not be able 
to hear him ; but he soon adapted his voice 
to the hall, and then everything went well. 
He is unsympathetic, or rather expresses 
no sympathy ; his business is with his sub- 
ject, not with his audience, and he pays 
no attention to them. They, on the con- 
trary, pay deep attention to him, but not 
having encouragement to express their 
pleasure they discreetly remain silent. 
The lecture was interesting and concise, 
passing rapidly over the history of Ireland 
and the Irish from the earliest annals to 
the close of the fifteenth century. It was 
not a picture of still life, but did not seem 
unfair. As Mr. Froude went on, he be- 
came personally, intensely interesting, 
more so perhaps from that which he did 
not say. A sudden glimpse would reveal 
depths of satire or a rich vein of humor, 
but we were never allowed more than 



106 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

a glimpse, and that piqued both curiosity 
and interest. Froude confined himself 
almost entirely to grave history ; but the 
one Scotch story he told, illuminated his 
subject, so inimitable was his way of telling 
it. We know that Mr. Froude does not 
admire Ireland ; that he does not believe 
she ever had a golden age ; that England 
has treated her badly, but the fault has 
been in too ill-timed, rather than excess of 
interference as he believes : also he credits 
the Irish with as fine traits of character as 
any other people ; and that it is in America, 
not in Great Britain, that the question of 
their future civilization and place in the 
world is to be settled. Mr. Froude did 
not excite any enthusiasm, but he did 
awaken interest in his subject and himself; 
an interest that grows and deepens as we 
think about both. 



1873. 

We are heartily enjoying a season of 
sunshine and amiability ; there is no politi- 



BOSTOy LETTERS. 107 

cal turmoil ; the city government is useful 
and quiet, though there is some amusing 
discussion on dinners at the public ex- 
pense, — and the amount of dinners at the 
public expense ; the small-pox trouble is 
over ; the streets are getting into decent 
order ; there are pretty actresses at the 
theatre. An English lecturer has been 
drawing large audiences. She tells us of 
the great women she has known ; she re- 
hearsed arguments, the a, b, c of woman's 
rights, that Lucy Stone had told us years 
ago. It is a mistake to suppose that any- 
body who can do many things well can 
lecture. Next to mental improvement, 
shopping is now the business of life most 
exhaustive and bewildering. The amount 
accomplished by women is an unanswer- 
able proof of their strength of body and 
clearness of mind. The latter may be 
owing to the severe training in scientific 
clearness ; to thread one's way, through 
the narrow and intricate lanes of fabrics 
and not lose one's temper, is a triumph of 



108 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

amiability ; to see all lovely and beautiful 
things and still buy inexpensive ones, if 
one has little money, is a triumph of prin- 
ciple over vanity ; and to know what one 
wants when one stands in a shop, with the 
products of the world's looms heaped up 
about them, proves singular clear-sighted- 
ness of judgment and firmness of purpose ; 
strong is the character demanded for wise 
shopping, exalted all the Christian virtues 
needed to make that peculiar feminine 
labor anything but anguish, mortification 
and waste of money. But Bostonians have 
some reason to be, well — to be what they 
are — indescribable by common pen. 



1873. 
On the third of July w^e had reason 
to be glad and proud of our progress 
toward liberty, for on that day we had 
some proof of it. A colored regiment 
from South Carolina had come as guests 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 109 

of the first colored regiment here. They 
marched through the streets and were 
reviewed by the mayor in front of the city 
hall, where addresses were made by the 
mayor and the South Carolina colonel. 
Our colored soldiers wore facings and 
feathers of white and light blue, and a 
very dark blue uniform ; the southerners 
wore, I think, green facings and black soft 
hats with long green feathers. They were 
a very picturesque and fine looking body 
of men. It was pleasant to see the interest 
they excited. School Street was crowded 
with spectators as they marched through 
it ; and at Parker's, guests and waiters left 
their dinners and flocked to the review. 
We remembered the scene in 1853, when 
Anthony Burns was marched through 
State Street guarded for slavery by white 
soldiers. Ten years after, the Rev. John 
Weiss wrote, " what a day was that when 
the merchants of State Street were com- 
pelled to stand silent upon the porticos of 
their banks and offices and see the idea of 



110 BOSTOX LETTEBS. 

liberty trampled on all the way down that 
historic street." These are different days 
now, when merchants and people of all 
ranks cluster on these porticos, fill the 
windows and balconies, clinging to every 
shelf of granite, to welcome with thunder- 
ing cheers and eyes moistened by patriotic 
emotion the successive regiments that bore 
the flag of civilization and freedom along 
to Alexandria, over pavements trodden by 
the slave's reluctant feet. It was the North 
retracing her pro-slavery step ; not fully 
seeing whither the thinking bayonets must 
go, not yet abandoning the flag, with 
deliberate consciousness to a great just 
war against slavery itself: but marching 
that way with the popular countenance 
lowering in the direction from whence all 
our ills were forthcoming. Retracing her 
pro-slavery steps ! yes, that is the story of 
the war. Slowly, painfully, one by one, 
did she retrace them ; washing out with 
innocent blood every print of the old 
shame, and offering at every step her 



BOSTON LETTEBS. Ill 

dearest and bravest in expiation : and now 
through that grand, historic street march 
those for whom the North retraced her 
steps ; the down-trodden whom she lifted 
up; and over them floats the starry flag, 
beneath which they suffered and by which 
they were saved. It was the triumphant 
end of the story that began in oppression 
and anguish. As we looked at the well- 
drilled, stalwart fellows and heard the 
jubilant music, we half expected to hear 
above the strains of Montgomery's mag- 
nificent hymn, 

" Lo myriads of slaves unto men are born. 
The word was omnipotent and there is light." 



1874. 

One of the most delightful autobiogra- 
phies ever written is that of Mrs. Mary 
Somerville. Mrs. Somerville was a thor- 
oughly kindly and affectionate woman ; 
her great scientific attainments and the 



112 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

admiration she received never made her 
vain, or spoiled in the least her sweet 
womanliness. Her childhood was passed 
in a little town near Edinburg, among poor 
people of simple habits ; and the sketch of 
her wild, free life in the old garden and on 
the shore, where she learned to know and 
to love flowers, shells, stones, birds, and 
all the animals that came in her way, is 
charming. Not far from her home was 
the fishing village of Newhaven. The 
very village that Charles Reade made 
famous years ago in the best and wittiest 
story he ever wrote, '' Christie Johnstone." 
Christie was perhaps one of the fishwomen 
whom Mrs. Somerville describes, who 
helped to land and prepare the fish when 
the boats came in ; carried them to town for 
sale ; managed the house ; brought up the 
children and provided food and clothing 
for all ; kept the purse and managed all 
the family matters. Some of the people 
were rich and lived well. Many of the 
young women were pretty, and all wore 



BOSTON LETTERS. 113 

bright colored costumes. Here is a picture 
of her childhood ; *' My mother was very 
much afraid of thunder and lightning, and 
knew when a storm was coming. We 
had an excellent and beautiful pointer, 
called Hero, a great favorite, who lived in 
the garden, but at the first clap of thunder 
would rush bounding indoors and place 
his face on my knee. Then my father, 
who laughed not a little at our fear, would 
bring a glass of wine to my mother and 
say, * drink that. Peg, it will give you cour- 
age, for we are going to have a rat-tat-too.' 
My mother would beg him to shut the 
window shutters ; and though she could no 
longer see to read, she kept the Bible on her 
knee for protection." This may show a 
lack of strength of mind, but there is some- 
thing very attractive in the group, — the 
young, terrified mother reading the Bible 
for safety, with her delicate child and the 
handsome dog nestling close to her, while 
the brave sailor husband affectionately 
tried to comfort them. One year of board- 
9 



114 BOSTON LET TEES. 

ing-school cast a little shadow over her 
girlhood, and her first marriage was passed 
over so lightly that the reader infers it was 
not a happy one. Several biographical 
notices, however, speak in the highest 
terms of Mr. Greig, her first husband, and 
attribute to his influence her great love of 
study and her success as an author and 
mathematician, but her mother, her biogra- 
pher, denies this. After his death, Mrs. 
Greig married her cousin, William Somer- 
ville, whose love and admiration for her 
were unbounded ; he warmly entered into 
her ideas and helped her in every way, 
proudly acknowledging her superiority to 
himself. This happy married year added 
to her knowledge, making her character 
more beautiful and her position more 
brilliant. She knew the best scientific and 
literary men and women in Europe ; she 
was a musician and a painter, and artists 
of note sought her society, while women 
of the highest rank were proud to have 
her grace their festivities. Her manners 



B S TON LE T TEE S. 115 

were faultless ; she had no conscious supe- 
riority, speaking very modestly of her 
successes. Her first book, '* The Mechan- 
ism of the Heavens," was published 1830 
or 31. She says, that while writing it she 
by no means gave up society, but dined 
out, went to evening parties, and to the 
theatre as usual. A few years later her 
second scientific book appeared. Her third 
book, a physical geography, was written 
when she was between sixty and seventy 
years old; her last one, *' Molecular and 
Microscopic Science," when she was nearly 
ninety. The powers of her mind never 
failed her, but in the last years of her life 
she worked slowly and tired easily. But 
the most charming thing in the book is the 
account of Mrs. Somerville's tender, noble, 
beautiful old age. Every word of it should 
be read by everybody. It is worth all the 
books ever written and all the speeches 
ever made about woman's education. 



116 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

1874. 

Do your readers recall Miss Peabody's 
record of Mr. Alcott's school in the first 
edition of her book, printed in 1835 ^ The 
school was for children under twelve years 
of age, and was kept in a large room in 
Masonic Temple. Mr. Alcott aimed to 
teach philosophically to even the youngest 
pupils that contemplation of spirit is the 
first principle of human culture, the foun- 
dation of self-education. The school was 
entirely original and very interesting, the 
methods of teaching were peculiar, but 
astonishingly successful, and the children 
grew wonderfully, both spiritually, men- 
tally and morally ; their conversations and 
comments upon what they read are extra- 
ordinary, and yet, I believe, they were 
only average children when Mr. Alcott 
took them in charge. He was the first 
man here who believed in the necessity of 
ornament in the school-room, of artistic 
education for children ; so he had upon the 
walls pictures ; and busts of Milton, Shake- 



BOSTON LETTERS. 117 

speare, Scott, Socrates and Plato in suitable 
places ; a medallion of Jesus ; a statue of 
Silence ; and some small images of children 
reading, drawing, etc. Freehand drawing 
from nature was taught to every child. 
Mr. Alcott must see with great satisfaction 
how his conversations of fifty years ago 
have become a law in our public schools. 
Probably none of his conversations at the 
time excited more comment than his system 
of punishment, which at an early stage of 
the school became vicarious. Mr. Alcott 
obliged offenders to apply the blows with 
the ferrule to himself instead of receiving 
them from him. But the reader must 
remember Mr. Alcott's school was forty 
years ago and was unique. 



1874. 

Closed houses, and doorways boarded 
up, are beginning to give an uninhabited 
look to man}^ of the streets, and show 



118 BOSTON LETTERS. 

how early people go into the country or to 
Europe ; but those who remain appear to 
crowd a whole year's work into these few 
May weeks, and the only care of a person 
of leisure must be to choose the kinds of 
amusement or instruction which shall fill 
the days. On Sundays there is also an 
immense variety offered ; the Saturday 
papers publish a sort of theological bill of 
fare for the next day, and all except those 
who prefer fasting can be suited. There 
is orthodoxy and heterodoxy of all flavors ; 
religion hot and cold, sensational and dig- 
nified ; science, art, history, imagination, 
rhapsodies and nonsense, — to be had with- 
out money and without price, for contribu- 
tions are not obligatory, but elective. 

On Friday evening, Mr. Alcott gave 
his talk about Concord authors before a 
large audience, in private parlors. He 
talks about Mr. Emerson with pure love 
and devotes most of the time to his mode 
of composition ; but with Hawthorne, a 
little bit of fun creeps into Mr, Alcott's 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 119 

grave manner, and it grows as he speaks 
of Thoreau and William E. Channing, 
the poet. He likes them all ; he admires 
them and gives them much praise ; but 
they were all so peculiar that their pecu- 
liarities must be mentioned, and Mr. Alcott 
does it with a little sense of fun and a little 
thoroughly good-natured satire that makes 
his talk lively and gives it a definite form ; 
a reality that his talk does not always 
have. 



1874. 

The great convention of progress is 
over and the annual turn has been given 
to the screw that lifts humanity, and on 
the whole the season has been edifying. 
The weather was delicious ; people cool 
and fresh in all sorts of new attire ; the 
streets were crowded, and owing perhaps 
to east winds earnestness did not seem 
depressed or depressing, as it does when 



1 20 BOSTOX LETTERS. 

the anniversaries come during a long 
storm, accompanied by innumerable water- 
proofs and umbrellas. Societies for ever}' 
kind of mental, moral and physical im- 
provement have gone over their bearings 
and have prepared for their next year's 
work. Christian and anti-Christian (the 
last spoken of as *' those who have sailed 
past the north star") have had a fair field 
for their debates. Peace conventions and 
military displays have gone on harmoni- 
ously side by side ; brewers from all parts 
of the country have gathered in the halls 
just vacated by total abstinence societies, 
and have sought refreshment and inspira- 
tion at Spy Pond, as their predecessors 
have in Cochituate. The meetings of the 
Young Men's Christian Union have been 
thought the freshest and most brilliant of 
the season, although the standard reforms 
all did well. There was prevailing good 
feeling and almost no wrangling, although 
the Unitarians were exercised about the 
exact place belonging to Rev. Wm. J. 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 121 

Potter in a theological classification. 
Decoration day followed — the prettiest 
day in all the year ; the soldiers carrying 
flowers, the gay uniforms, the brilliant 
banners, the dazzling musical instruments ; 
and there were innumerable picturesque 
breaks and groupings as the crowd moved 
on. Just at noon the soldiers came to 
the old graveyards in the heart of the 
city, where the dark low stones and the 
fresh green grass were flecked with sun- 
shine and shadow ; on the few graves 
were laid bright flowers and wreaths, a 
short prayer was made, deep voices sang a 
hymn, while the blossoms of the horse- 
chestnut and the graceful mountain-ash fell 
on the heads of the young men ; nothing 
could be sweeter or more tender than the 
whole picture. 



1874. 

A large audience gathered to hear Mr. 
Curtis's eulogy on Mr. Sumner. The 



122 BOSTON LETTERS. 

services were long, and one could study the 
men who came to do Mr. Sumner honor; 
men whose lives have been to thwart 
Sumner's plans and weaken his influence. 
Now they are all converted ; no more 
lobbying or office seeking ; no man will be 
found again making money at the expense 
of the government, and the good time will 
soon come. These spectacles of public 
honor are very impressive ; this universal 
recognition as soon as a man dies, of a 
great moral hero, when his early, stanch, 
and lifelong friends and co-workers are 
outdone in their testimonials of respect 
and admiration by the hooting mob of 
yesterday, *'who in silent awe return to 
gather up the scattered ashes into history's 
golden urn." Mr. Sumner was a man of 
tender heart, of courteous and gracious 
feeling ; but to people not intimate with 
him the touch of arrogance in his manner 
was not pleasing. But faults of manner 
are easily forgotten, 

" The surface blemish in the stately stone 
Of the tall shapely pyramid." 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 123 

1874. 

The cessation of business gives one an 
opportunity to make the acquaintance of 
shop cats, who are a class by themselves, 
and quite worthy the attention of the essay- 
ist who wrote on ancient and modern cats 
in the Atlantic. Every town has a few of 
these sleek, beautiful specimens of the race ; 
one, perhaps, at the chief grocer's and one 
at the apothecary's : but here, there is a 
regiment of them, each a marvel of size, 
beauty and intelligence. The grocer's 
cats are pure maltese ; huge, dignified, 
courteous, without nerves, with kind, calm, 
eyes and a quiet tail. The book cats are 
black, slender, shining, full of activity, 
always alert, with fire in their eyes and 
tails in perpetual motion ; they steal 
among the books like shadows, snuff' at 
the old Russia bindings, slide over the 
smooth golden calf (if that was the gold 
calf of the Egyptians, one can understand 
their idolatry) ; have their favorites among 
the picture-books, birds or fishes ; perhaps 



124 BOSTON LETTERS. 

muse over the gorgeous art-books, but 
never scratch or injure anything. 

Somewhere between the luxurious bon 
vivant at the grocer's and the narrow, 
slender student at the bookman's, is the 
apothecary's cat, who seems useful and 
practical ; uniting something of the literary 
taste of the one with the domestic quie- 
tude of the other, but in the union letting 
the charm of each escape. All are well 
behaved ; neither aggressive nor diffident, 
though the bookstore cat has a little less 
bofihomte than the grocer's. But the cat at 
the fancy goods store is unique in his accom- 
plishments and his fantastic appearance ; 
black as jet, and almost as smooth and 
bright : he wears in his ears large downy 
pompons of orange colored feathers, which 
meet above his head and flutter as he 
breathes. They make him a most pecu- 
liar object, look as if they grew there, and 
apparently please him. He stands up on 
his hind legs, shakes a paw, and nods his 
gay head, when you are properly intro- 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 125 

duced to him and then retires. He, too, 
is trained to careful habits ; taking his 
daily walks abroad among the fragile 
treasures on the counter and the shelves 
without disturbing or injuring one of them. 
Education may not be desirable on the 
whole for cats, or conducive to the future 
welfare of their race ; but it makes them 
far more pleasing than the wild creatures, 
striped like zebras or mottled with yellow, 
who rendezvous wherever there are trees 
or coverts, dart like meteors through the 
darkness and howl like demons. 



1874. 

The motto of the new dress reform is 
health, strength and beauty. It should be 
borne in mind that dress reform has nothing 
to do with prohibition, politics, suffrage or 
theology. The new garments are made 
according to the multitude of counsellors 
who differ widely in opinion on social 



126 BOSTON LETTERS. 

and religious matters, but want clothes 
comfortable and according to the laws of 
physiology. 

Private literary and scientific enter- 
tainments are numerous and interesting. 
There is, of course, here nothing like full 
dress ; but solemnity is not imperative, and 
the unmistakeable Boston backc^round of 
rich silk is not only studded with pearls 
but brilliantly relieved by velvets and 
satins of superb crimsons and purples, 
softened by exquisite laces. This half- 
dress, with plain or wavy hair drawn 
loosely and simply from the face with 
Grecian knot at the back of the head or 
looped in a heavy braid is the pretty 
present fashion ; a pleasant picture is one 
of the luxuriously furnished parlors filled 
not only with young men and picturesque 
maidens, but with silver-haired grand- 
fathers and grandmothers gathered about 
some learned professor who stands before 
blackboard mounted on an easel, and 
explains by words and rapid marvellous 



BOSTON LETTERS. 127 

drawing the latest discovery in science. 
Or, instead of professor and blackboard, 
we may have a brief talk ; a red rose 
in an artistic vase for a dash of color, and 
a poet with his own verses for the centre 
of the group. I believe now we have 
no such thing as frivolity. Amusement, 
according to the dictionary, is profound 
meditation; to amuse is to ** engage in 
meditation," or *' to entertain with tran- 
quillity " ; in that art we have become 
masters. 



i87S- 
There is a sort of passion for music 
here now ; day after day, evening after 
evening, rehearsals and concerts fill the 
Boston Theatre from floor to roof. Musi- 
cal criticisms are very interesting to people 
absolutely ignorant of music, and lead 
them to strange conclusions. I am not 
sure that Wagner's compositions should 



128 BOSTON LETTERS. 

not be called the music of the ignorant 
instead of the *' music of the future," for 
to the ignorant, " Lohengrin" and parts of 
*' Tristan and Isolde" were healthfully 
stimulating and exciting. It seemed that 
Wagner had caught all the sounds of 
nature, and that instead of instruments 
they heard the wind in winter woods, 
through summer pines, and the sound of 
the sea as it dashed on wild rocks or 
played with the lowest and warmest of 
yellow beaches. It is a melancholy and 
pitiable thing to be ignorant, but one feels 
inclined to thank God for the compensa- 
tion we have given to ignorance, which is 
not voluntary or wilful but fixed in the 
nature ot the creature foreordained to it. 



1875- 

I know nothing of technical terms, but 
to the inartistic world pictures may be 
broadly divided into the finished and the 



BOSTON LETTERS. 129 

unfinished in style. The two styles shade 
into each other, but the extremes of each 
are easily recognized ; one, finishes with 
minute care each detail of the picture ; if 
it is a woman's hand, half-hidden by a 
sleeve, every visible finger is finished with 
joints and nails ; if it is a face, it seems as 
if every hair of the eyelashes were painted 
separately. In an outdoor scene there is 
an approach to the same exactness. The 
opposite style works in quite a different 
way ; using a great deal of paint until the 
canvas is as rough as a troubled sea ; 
scorning details, but holding fast the truth 
in anatomy, color and effect. It says, 
** I put this scene before you; it is just 
what I saw, so I have painted it." This 
is a perfectly clear and honorable posi- 
tion ; the position in which many of our 
artists stand and one which they defend 
well. Viewed at a proper distance every- 
thing is all right; approach, and every- 
thing looks crude and rough. It is 
unfair to blame a man for lack of fine 

lO 



130 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

finish when fine finish is what he despises, 
and it is most of all unfair to call this broad 
and strong style hasty or careless work ; it 
is just as much the result of study and labor 
as the opposite style ; but only the hand of 
an expert can put on these rough dashes of 
color that viewed rightly give the desired 
effect. It has devoted admirers and can- 
not be carried too far for their pleasure ; 
the danger seems to be that palette, knife 
and coarse brush will entirely supersede 
other implements and that details will be 
treated with undeserved scorn ; but the 
danger, if there be one, comes not from 
carelessness or fear of work, but from a 
desire for strength, truth, vitality and indi- 
viduality in painting. It is the breaking 
away from a conventional school, and has 
necessarily something of audacity and 
burlesqueness in it. It will soon grow into 
something better, and may prove only the 
tumultuous boyhood that ripens into noble 
manhood. 



BOSTON LETTERS. 131 

1875. 

If you never heard Dr. Holmes read 
one of his own poems you have no idea 
what reading is. I never knew until 
today. I have heard all the noted readers 
from Fanny Kemble down, and almost all 
the famous preachers of the country, but 
never until now did I know the art of true 
reading. Dr. Holmes himself is illumi- 
nated ; all the poet comes into his face and 
thrills in his voice ; the effect is magnetic 
and entrancing. It seems like the un- 
studied outpouring of heart and thought ; 
there is no touch of acting in it ; the art 
is so perfect we are unconscious of it, yet 
the dramatic effect is marvellous. We 
had all read the poem and were familiar 
with its illustrations ; we knew the story 
and just what was coming in every verse ; 
yet there we sat and cried as if it were all 
new to us, and the smiles that came now 
and then only made the tears more unman- 
ageable. 



132 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

1875- 
The neighboring shore towns are easily 
accessible by railroad, and the air and the 
climate cannot be over-praised ; fresh, 
invigorating, quite hot enough at noon, 
but almost cool at night, and sweet with the 
most delicate odors of flowers, grasses and 
shrubs ; some drawn out by the irresistible 
noonday sun, some waiting to lavish their 
perfume on the enchanting evenings. At 
Manchester the boulders are lower and 
wider ; the rocks are rough, jagged and 
broken into curious and monstrous crea- 
tures that in a dim light seem crawling on 
the shore, only half conquered, ready for 
another furious struggle with the ocean 
that is now calm comparatively, and only 
touches them with a light wreath of surf 
foam, and you hear only a monotonous 
murmuring, a restful chant ; but one never 
loses the memory of what has been and will 
be again ; there is no repose in these rough 
headlands ; man has not tried to soften 
them ; they are still savage and filled with 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 133 

a kind of terror. Farther south their 
characteristics are softer. The terrible 
headlines and more terrible gorges have 
become almost tame and offer friendly 
resting-places for the pleasure seekers, 
who are always wandering over them. 
Every summer the wild roses are a new 
wonder ; they grow everywhere, crowded 
with blossoms of every shade from crimson 
to the faintest blush. No flower looks 
more delicate or refined, or is more vigor- 
ous or democratic in its friendships. It 
fellowships with every neighbor, covering 
stone walls, lighting up solitary places and 
hiding ugly scars ; it makes common cause 
with the beautiful alder, the treacherous ivy 
and the haughty thistle, the sweet ferns and 
all the grasses within reach. There seems 
to be a sort of world's fair of nothing but 
ferns with just a hedge of wild roses, 
and for the time one wants nothing else. 
People who live in the country are so 
accustomed to this wealth of beauty that it 
does not excite them ; but to one who lives 



134 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

in the midst of brick walls all the time 
and learns to look on every square foot of 
grass on the Common with gratitude, this 
lavish beauty of the unhindered summer, 
its sights and sounds and odors are ever a 
new marvel, which thrills and stirs the 
heart. 



1876. 

In the meeting in memory of Margaret 
Fuller, the pleasant thing to an outsider 
was to see how men retain their capacity 
for admiration unimpaired by years of 
work, or the wear and tear of life. No 
youth ever poured out for his ideal such en- 
thusiastic rapture of appreciation as these 
grave, wise men, with more than half a 
life behind them, offered to the woman 
they admired in their youth, whose cham- 
pions they were for years ; who animated 
their minds, purified their hearts, en- 
nobled their characters ; who went be- 



BOSTON LETTERS. 135 

fore age had chilled the ardor of her 
youth to Italy and lived through heroic 
years of suffering ; whose earthly life 
shone with the glory of poetry, romance 
and pain, *' set like the sun in the ocean 
more beautiful than it rose." Remember- 
ing all this, who cares to cavil or criticize. 
Three hours given to pure enthusiasm, to 
boundless love, to generous judgment are 
something to be grateful for in these or 
any days. 



1876. 

The celebration here was of double 
interest, commemorating the burning of the 
town in 1676, and the Declaration of 
Independence. Its records tell of bitter 
sufferings, of murdered men, of kidnapped 
children, burnt dwellings, and an ever 
watchful foe ; but out of all these hard- 
ships came strength and valor, faith and 
prosperity, and Groton has good reason to 



136 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

be satisfied with her numerous children 
who gathered to do her honor. The town 
itself is one of the prettiest in New Eng- 
land ; situated on high land with a broad 
outlook over the green Nashua valley, 
over cultivated farms to Wachusett, Mo- 
nadnock, Watatek, and the long range of 
purple hills on the distant horizon ; the 
town is at its loveliest these clear, hot July 
days ; the great elms and superb chestnuts, 
rich in the abundance of their pale yellow 
bloom, stretching out cool shadows all the 
day long, marvellously beautiful at twi- 
light, their exquisite forms and tracer}^ 
showing black against a sky that faded 
from burnished gold through all the tints 
of orange, with a clear soft gray. The 
Declaration of Independence was read 
with such ardor and impressiveness that it 
seemed to me wholly new, and I began to 
feel about it as Jefferson himself must have 
felt, or as Mr. Emerson felt when comment- 
ing on Mr. Choate's contempt for high- 
sounding phrases as ''glittering gener- 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 137 

alities"; he said, *' Glittering generalities, 
they are pleasing ubiquities." And as 
they were read this day they seemed not 
only pleasing, but fresh ubiquities, as if it 
were their birthday and not the completion 
of their century. As I sat by the open 
window in the old church, with the beauti- 
ful, peaceful landscape about me, the rich 
grass waving in the summer wind, the air 
sweet with ripening grain and the perfume 
of flowers and blossoming trees ; as I 
listened to the grand old Scripture words 
and to the heroic story of the prayers, the 
fights, the work and the faith of the hand- 
ful of men who planted Groton in the 
wilderness two hundred years ago, — I 
thought that here were the true poetry and 
sentiment of the New England life ; here 
the expression of the feeling, the resolu- 
tion and the faith that binds New England 
together and makes the country what it is ; 
here the old God-fearing spirit, so marked 
in Puritanism, so much less prominent 
now, but still the same spirit which lives 



138 BOSTON LETTERS. 

deep in every true New England heart, 
the one sure chord to touch for a deep and 
full response. One is impressed with the 
earnest devoutness that animates these 
country anniversaries ; that gives life to 
the speeches, and stirs the hearers' hearts. 
There is little jesting, little humorous talk ; 
but every eulogy of the virtues of the 
fathers, every admonition to honor them 
by carrying their work still farther in their 
spirit, every appeal to make this nation 
grow in virtue as she has grown in power, 
is answered with enthusiasm. All these 
things are not spoken perfunctorily by 
paid speakers, but on an anniversary 
where townsfolk meet together, who know 
each other well, and do not masquerade 
for each other's amusement, but talk seri- 
ously of the deepest things. They are all 
in a softened mood ; they call up tender 
reminiscences ; the old men talk with a 
touch of pathos of their happy boyhood, 
of the town's and the country's growth ; 
and here comes the high thinking, not it 



BOSTON LETTERS. 139 

may be aesthetically or classically ex- 
pressed, not always sure of its grammar, 
but high in putting unselfish service and 
honor above all else. 

The ideal is high and pure. Men may 
fall far below it, may follow it '* with 
stumbling walk or in scant measure " ; 
but so long as it is confessed on these 
anniversaries, so long as they listen with 
new interest and fresh glow to these 
noblest statements of duty the country has 
reason to hope ** that religion and morality 
will prevail in the land," and that the 
nation will live. 



1877. 

Even in northern Vermont July has 
been hot. The Green Mountain region 
has been worthy of its name so far as 
color goes, but coolness was not to be 
found ; yet there is something splendid 
in the long summer days among the hills. 



140 BOSTON LETTERS. 

The roads were in good condition, no 
dust ; all day long the light clouds lay 
almost motionless among the blue, or 
lazily trailed their shadows over hills, 
grain fields and beautiful woods, where 
the hemlocks, firs and pines stood dark 
and still, while the poplars turned their 
leaves to catch every breath of wind and 
seemed suddenly to burst into great white 
blossoms. The Rudbeckias were large and 
fine, and the Meadow Rue, known as the 
poor man's silver, was growing luxuriantly ; 
one beautiful bunch of it on a wee bit of 
an island in the middle of a stream, a 
branch of the Winoostek River, which 
came over the rocks in a hundred clear 
pools and whirled away over the stones 
and did everything delightful that a moun- 
tain stream can do, or can sing ; and there 
firmly rooted, leaving not an inch of earth 
for anything else, grew this stately, grace- 
ful plant. 

There was nobody to cut it down or 
spoil its surrounding. The banks of the 



BOSTON LETTERS. 141 

stream are a mass of ferns ; neglected 
fields overrun with nodding lilies of every 
shade. The ponds are green with lily- 
leaves, crowding close to the shore and 
stretching far out into the water like a 
beautiful laid, broad pavement ; and there 
must have been hundreds of thousands 
of lilies in bloom. The roadsides were 
radiant with the blossoms of the thimble- 
berries which grew far into the woods, 
and the color of their berries was very 
effective. These unspoiled road hedges, 
when on either side, fenced against the 
walls, with odorous shrubs, were very 
enchanting. The roads about the river 
led to many charming cascades and water- 
falls. Many of the mills are dropping to 
pieces, but they add to the picturesqueness 
of the ruins, which are always made more 
interesting by some human element : a man 
may have left his work for the most prosaic 
of reasons, still there is pathetic interest 
in an old mill with the rust on its wheel 
and the saw rusting in the half-sawn log. 



142 BOSTON LETTERS. 

There is a striking difference in the fall 
of night at the hills and on the seashore. 
On the shore, the water holds the light ; 
long before it is dim, the lighthouses send 
out their flames, and we have conscious- 
ness of human life and human watchful- 
ness. Night at the mountains is much 
more solemn than night at the sea. One 
cannot wonder at wild superstitions of 
legends among mountaineers. One can 
only wonder that any amount of knowl- 
edge fails to destroy such legends. Per- 
haps knowledge has less power than we 
think it has, and fails in the darkness of 
night as all signs fail in a dry time. 
One night swallowing the world in dark- 
ness may have induced a frame of mind 
to which all wonder seemed a matter of 
course, and the line between thought and 
motion blotted out, as all other lines are, 
by the great lower darkness lying under 
the far-away blue sky. Perhaps doubt 
and sadness and fear were born in human 
hearts when the first night fell upon Adam 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 143 

and Eve. No astronomer or theologian 
can tell about that night. Milton, as a 
poet, assumes '* that the moon's resplen- 
dent globe aroused the blest pair to 
admiration," but there is room for a less 
optimistic view. Is it not probable that 
the **fall of man" dates from the first 
experience of darkness, and that no new 
day ever brought back the confidence that 
the first night darkened almost to extin- 
guishment ? 



1879. 

Boston was never more alive in thought, 
speech and business than it is now ; *' not 
slothful in business — serving the Lord," 
might be its motto ; unusual interest in 
religion and theology without any unnatu- 
ral excitement or machinery of revivals. 
The free religious meetings draw crowds 
of thoughtful people ; the radical club has 
more and more interest for those who 



144 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

want to know what radicals think. The 
evangelical churches increase rapidly ; the 
Suffolk Conference of Unitarians discuss 
their work at King's Chapel by able ex- 
ponents of differing phases of Christianity 
to overflowing audiences. 

The Rev. Charles Kingsley is our 
prominent visitor and lecturer. He has 
hosts of readers, many of whom do not 
agree with him, but all wish to hear him. 
He is a man of middle height, with large 
features, looking much older than he 
really is ; he appears more the clergyman 
than the poet, more the man of letters 
than either. He talked of *' Discoverers 
of America," and showed how dear to him 
are Norse poetry, the Norse courage and 
sadness ; his half-chanted praise of them 
is interesting and brimming over with 
warm human feeling ; he must be like the 
old bards. I believe the loose robe and 
picturesque harp would be the fitting 
accompaniment for the half-speech, half- 
song, in which he recounts the glories of 



BOSTON LETTERS, 145 

the past, the sadness of the present, and the 
blessedness of the future. 



1879. 

The Summer School of Philosophy at 
Concord adds to the other charms of the 
place, and makes the little town one of 
the most interesting in the country. A 
school of this kind has been the desire of 
Mr. Alcott for many years, and makes him 
very happy. He is now in his eightieth 
year, vigorous in frame, joyous in spirit, 
young in heart, with a kind word for 
everybody, and a ready response to any- 
thing merry or humorous. He talks as he 
has talked for years, faithful to his favorite 
topics of education and the higher life ; 
a beautiful and venerable figure, sitting 
among the younger philosophers who 
gather about him, in his pleasant old 
home set in the midst of trees and fields. 

Concord itself is like no other town ; it 
II 



146 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

seems undisturbed by turmoil and agita- 
tion, and free from small petty rivalries. 
The hospitality of the people is boundless, 
and so is their refined kindness ; and the 
beautiful spot seems full of abiding peace 
and good-will. Besides its historic asso- 
ciations, its monuments, its library and, 
best of all, its people, Concord has its 
slow, lovely river, of which Thoreau wrote, 
'*The river is remarkable for its gentle, 
hardly perceptible current, and some have 
referred to its influence the proverbial 
moderation of the inhabitants of Concord 
in the Revolution and on later occasions." 
The main street is parallel with the river, 
and the comfortable old houses have 
gardens at the back sloping down to the 
water. The numerous landings, each 
with its little fleet of boats, dories or 
canoes, adds to the picturesque effect and 
to the charm of the boating. We idled for 
hours on the stream, guided by one who 
knows every inch of its windings ; pushed 
under the trees, and drank of the spring of 



BOSTON LETTERS. 147 

living waters, which gushes out from some 
sylvan hiding-place, and let the boat drift 
into the very spot that Hawthorne describes 
in his '* Mosses from an Old Manse," 
where " there is a lofty bank, on the slope 
of which grow some hemlocks, declining 
across the stream, with outstretched arms, 
as if resolute to take the plunge." It 
might have been our day on the river that 
Hawthorne wrote about ; we glided from 
depth to depth and breathed new seclusions 
at every turn. Like Hawthorne, we found 
in July the prophecy of autumn : a few 
maples the color of the purple beech, a 
rare color for maples to take on, and fallen 
crimson leaves flecking the water ; . the 
golden rods were marshalled in stately 
ranks, just ready to unfold their plumes ; 
and with all the peace and beauty came 
the half melancholy consciousness that time 
has given us all its flowers and that the 
next work of his never idle hands was to 
steal them all away. Concord is rich in 
wild flowers and meadow grasses ; and 



148 BOSTON LETTERS. 

when one sums up its charms of philoso- 
phy and literature, art and nature, in 
addition to some of the most delightful 
people in the world, the story seems a little 
fabulous ; but it is all true, and yet not 
half the truth, for that would require better 
and warmer words than mine to tell. 



1880. 

I have been to one of the hearings of 
the Senate Committee on the Ponca In- 
dians. On their part were White Eagle 
and Standing Buffalo, Ponca chiefs, elder- 
ly, intelligent men, eager to do the right 
and best thing for their tribe, but neither 
able to understand a word of English. 
There was a Pawnee interpreter, honest, 
but not a master of either the English or 
the Pawnee tongue, and Frank and Suzette 
La Flesche (the latter known as Bright 
E3^es), educated Omaha Indians, both 
perfectly familiar with English and French. 



BOSTON LETTERS. 149 

If you had sat there a half-hour you 
would have known, as well as by years of 
study, what are the difficulties in making 
treaties with the Indians ; that is, treaties 
which both parties understand alike. 
Nothing can exceed the slowness of the 
conversation. There were three senators, 
two of them warm friends of the Indians, 
and all desirous to get at White Eagle's 
opinion as to the welfare of his tribe ; the 
chiefs anxious to tell their wishes ; and 
their interpreters equally anxious for a 
perfect understanding. One of the sena- 
tors would ask a question simple enough 
to him, but involving some legal questions 
of absolute or qualified rights to lands or 
some technical perplexities. Probably the 
terms have no equivalent in the Indian 
tongue, and no satisfactory explanation 
could be reached. It was pathetic, and 
White Eagle's answers in their very uncer- 
tainty told the whole story. He said in 
reply to some question about selling the 
Ponca lands, "I do not want to decide 



150 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

this ; I do not know the English language 
or the ways of white men. My children 
will learn English. I will leave it to 
them to decide." Suzette would come to 
the rescue of the Pawnee interpreter, in 
her clear, concise way, saying, " He saj^s 
he is between two evils, the evil of the 
present and the unknown evil of the 
future." He says more than that, but that 
is the substance of it. Suzette is the most 
noble, self-sacrificing girl in the country 
and one of the best informed on Indian 
matters. 



1885. 

The second lecture in the course on the 
*' War for the Union," which is especiall}^ 
designed for young people, was given by 
Col. T. W. Higginson. It was truly 
inspiring to hear a man who had fought 
on the northern side, who had commanded 
a colored regiment stationed in North 
Carolina, who has always been an uncom- 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 151 

promising abolitionist, tell the story of 
secession and of South Carolina ''pluck" 
with the generous appreciation of an 
enemy, which Col. Higginson showed ; 
and then came the details of Maj. Ander- 
son's work. A large map of the fort and 
of Charleston harbor hung on the wall. 
To this Col. Higginson sometimes referred. 
He spoke without notes, and he never 
spoke better. His audience was almost 
breathless. Even the children listened 
with open mouths and open eyes fixed 
upon this wondrous story-teller, and the 
■whole audience was fascinated. Never 
before had Sumter seemed so important ; 
never before Maj. Anderson such a hero. 
The cleverly planned and accomplished 
removal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sum- 
ter ; the weary waiting for provisions and 
reinforcements ; the tantalizing nearness of 
help that proved to be no help ; the slow 
months in which nothing was done and 
the supplies were exhausted ; the courage, 
the religious spirit of the commander; and 



152 BOSTON LETTERS. 

then the attack by immense odds on that 
little garrison in Sumter ; all this was told 
with such enthusiasm, such directness, such 
dramatic power, that the whole audience 
listened like one person. It grew dark as 
the heavy clouds gathered, and silently a 
young man rose and lighted the gas on 
either side of the platform ; but that seemed 
to be no interruption. Every e3^e was 
fixed on the lecturer, every ear listened to 
what Maj. Anderson did. They saw the 
buildings on fire close to the shells ; they 
heard the shrieks of the shells ; they 
knew that the United States flag had been 
shot away and not hauled down ; they 
knew that food was almost exhausted : but 
when the story ended with the surrender, 
and when Maj. Anderson marched out of 
the blazing fort with flags flying, drums 
beating and a final salute of fifty guns, a 
good many old eyes were dim with tears, 
and the intent listening of an hour was 
broken by the enthusiastic clapping of a 
thousand young hands. 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 153 

It is sometimes said that people no longer 
care for the war ; that a new generation has 
grown up who are no longer interested in it 
and know nothing of its heroism : but no 
tale of romance could be more captivating, 
more exciting, more noble than this story 
of honor and valor told by Col. Higginson. 
One of the great charms of this lecturer 
was that it was addressed to young persons 
supposed to know nothing about the story 
of Sumter. Nature has made him a story- 
teller, and this is one of the most desirable 
gifts she can bestow. It is in vain for one 
to whom it is not given to seek to acquire 
it. These lectures are a part of the far- 
reaching work of Mrs. Hemenway toward 
the education of the young ; awakening 
and strengthening their patriotism, and 
helping them to lead honorable and useful 
lives. 



1885. 

The accounts of foreign cities and of 
their points of interest and beauty arouse 



154 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

readers to enthusiasm and to a half-envy 
of the travellers who enjoy so much, that 
sometimes one is inclined to think the 
attractions of our own cities are over- 
looked. Here is a sketch of a walk taken 
in Boston, not for sight-seeing, but to 
do errands. This morning was perfect. 
As one walked ** down town" through 
Beacon Street, the handsome houses were 
open, flowers abundant in the windows ; 
a light haze softened all the distant out- 
lines, and the gilded dome on the State 
House had a magical effect ; on the left, 
through frequent openings, the river was 
visible through its pretty banks ; on the 
right, the public garden, the pond still 
frozen, but the trees beginning to show 
spring life. Across the street stretched 
the telegraph wires, those airy bridges 
over which invisible and silent messengers 
are always carrying their messages of life 
or death, joy or pain, safety or ruin. The 
scene was beautiful, one could hardly 
imagine a lovelier city view. We go on 



BOSTON LETTERS. 155 

through an older and narrower street, past 
the large building overlooking a wide 
reach of river and country ; past the Eye 
and Ear Infirmary, which does a world of 
good in a quiet way, — into the region where 
colored people love to congregate ; where 
one may see almost all shades of com- 
plexion and prosperity, from jollity in rags 
to the latest fashion of purple and fine 
linen ; here there is no color line. If 
republicanism, political rights, equality 
before the law, and charity are of any im- 
portance in the world, a walk in Boston is 
a great lesson in the progress of humanity 
in what has been gained and in what is 
still to be labored for. 

We see the Massachusetts General Hos- 
pital with its wings stretching in all direc- 
tions, and more in number than those of 
the seraphim, and churches of old and 
priceless memories ; we look down upon 
the Charity Building on Chardon Street, 
where wise and earnest philanthropists 
struggle with the problem of pauperism 



156 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

and do their best to make the poor self- 
supporting and respectable ; we see a 
great deal of historic ground, the names 
of the streets have been changed, large 
new buildings have taken the place of 
those which saw the Revolution, but enough 
is left to recall the stirring scenes of those 
great days and the heroic, splendid fight 
for liberty, which still in the telling, 
especially if the teller be John Fiske, will 
make the most sluggish blood hot, and 
call even dead patriotism to life ; we pass 
the dignified statue of noble Samuel 
Adams; we look down on Faneuil Hall, 
with its memories of mobs and triumphs, 
of magnificent eloquence and mischievous 
dogmatism, of eulogies and warnings, and 
of welcome to patriots of all nations, '' the 
cradle " not only of liberty, but of every 
form of free speech that comes with liberty ; 
and so down into the region of banks and 
insurance offices and of business palaces 
built where once the free tide ebbed and 
flowed ; past the large post-office, where 



BOSTON LETTERS. lo7 

flocks of pigeons fluttered in the windows 
and rested on every projecting ornament, 
cooing perhaps about the days when their 
own race were trained as letter-carriers 
and telling tales of some ancestor who did 
gallant deeds and sacrificed life that he 
might loyally deliver his message. Car- 
rier-pigeons are charming in poetry and 
story, but after all we are grateful for the 
gray clad postmen, who are prompt and 
pleasant, and do so much more than even 
the most athletic dove could ever have 
done. In this part of the city one forgets 
the great excess of females in the popula- 
tion, and can walk rapidly, unimpeded by 
saunterers, by crowds at shop windows, 
or by infants, broad by nature and still 
broader by costume, who with their full 
gay cloaks, their top-heavy boots, their 
chubby faces, and their need of the whole 
sidewalk on which to practice their newly 
acquired art of walking, are charming 
creatures in their way, but decided obstruc- 
tions in the crowded region of retail shops. 



158 B OSTOX LE T TEES. 

The windows of the florists are gorgeous 
with flowers at enormous prices, and those 
who can't buy can still get the better part 
of the show, the assurance of the nearness 
of spring that is brought by the violets, 
the tulips and the positively inspiring 
daffodils. 

"And then my heart with pleasure fills 
And dances with the daffodils," 

wrote Wordsworth, and the gay, yellow 
blossoms are forever associated with the 
poet, and give almost the only touch of 
bright color to the associations with him. 

Coming back to Tremont Street, we 
pause to look into the Granary burying- 
ground, of which Miss Preston once wrote 
so charmingly : '* In the very heart of the 
city, where the pulse of life beats most 
vehemently, where streets are narrow and 
every inch is twice historic, there is a little 
oasis of peace, a quiet place of ancient 
graves, not desecrated yet, and let us 
hope not soon to be, where the sheltered 
turf is early green and grows luxuriantly 



BOSTON LETTEBb. 159 

about the tombs and leaning head-stones." 
Among the tombs far back from the street, 
in the shelter of the walls of the Athenaeum 
Library, are those of Peter Faneuil, Paul 
Revere, Richard Bellingham, and a host of 
other Boston worthies. Far in front, close 
to the street, is the grave of Wendell Phil- 
lips, marked with a wreath of immortelles 
and covered with hemlock boughs, under 
which the earliest flowers of spring are 
buried waiting for their sure resurrection ; 
and then w^e come to another old grave- 
yard and to King's Chapel, which should 
always be known as the place where free 
thought gained a quiet and striking victory, 
where religion cast off a part of her theo- 
logical fetters and declared herself free 
to choose her own forms. And so on, 
through the street where a few years ago 
were only delightful dwelling-houses look- 
ing out on a quiet common, but where 
now is the incessant roar and din of busi- 
ness. Many new buildings for philan- 
thropic or educational purposes, and the 



160 BOSTOX LETTERS. 

Art Museum, crowded with its treasures, 
the beautiful building of the Art Club ; the 
new Medical College shows what substan- 
tial prosperity grows out of disease, how 
death supports life, and what an important 
factor illness is in modern civilization ; 
very near is the new Spiritual Temple, as 
substantial as if built for weighty bodies 
alone, and our walk ends where it began. 
It has taken about two hours. How many 
other cities can in so small a space show 
more natural beauty or offer more of 
historic value, of philanthropic work, of 
active and practical interest in religion, 
science, education, literature and art. To 
see all this in a chance walk on one of 
the perfect days that early March some- 
times vouchsafes us, beginning with a 
poetic mist and clearing into a sky of soft, 
delicious blue, awakens a great deal of 
thought, gives keen pleasure, and calls 
forth a tribute of admiration for Boston 
from one who is not a Bostonian. 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 161 

1886. 

Last Sunday I was present at a religious 
service so novel and so interesting that I 
send you this account of it. Although I 
am quite sure that under ordinary circum- 
stances the events in a private family 
should not be made public, this seems so 
exceptional that it may justify an infringe- 
iTient of that rule. In a picturesque house, 
on one of the wildest and most beautiful 
points of the north shore, there were gath- 
ered for a Christian service the members 
of the family and a few guests, among 
whom were three Zuni Indians who knew 
nothing of Christianity. They are the 
prominent men of their tribe : one is the 
old governor ; one a young priest ; and 
the third holds no office, but is a typical 
Zuni gentleman. They have been for 
some weeks with their friend, Mr. Frank 
Cushing. They are very quiet, very ob- 
servant, take kindly to civilized life, and 
above all they are religious. Three times 
a day, rain or shine, cold or heat, these 
12 



162 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

picturesque figures may be seen, each 
taking his solitary way to some point on 
the shore, where he reverently says his 
prayers and throws into the ocean his offer- 
ing of sacred meal, made from the best of 
his grain and the finest of his shells ground 
to powder. No one knows for how many 
years, or centuries rather, this form of 
worship has been practiced by the Zuni 
Indians ; but here they are an inland tribe, 
with their traditions of having lived by the 
ocean, the source of life and light, the 
symbol of the God to whom they offer 
sacrifice three times each day. On last 
Sunday afternoon they listened to the 
prayers and to the music, which they do 
not like, and to the passages from the 
Bible which Mr. Gushing interpreted to 
them. Then the clergyman made a short 
address to them, merely speaking of the 
greater light which has come to us. It 
was rather a vague address, but at the 
close of it the old governor spoke with 
great grace and eloquence. It is impossi- 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 163 

ble to report half he said, but I made a 
note of some points and trust my memory 
for others. He said that all nations begin 
in darkness, and, with or without priests, 
grow like corn up to the light. Some 
are in favorable places, some others in 
unfavorable ; they may struggle along in 
crooked ways, but they are sure to come to 
the light at last. And then, like corn, 
some stalks grow tall and tower above the 
others and get more light, which the others 
must receive from them. He said that 
long ago the Zunis cared only for war and 
destruction; that, as men, they wanted to 
be like mountain lions and fight all that 
came in their way ; but they attacked a 
nation stronger and wiser than themselves 
and were almost destroyed, but their gods 
saved them ; they made peace with their 
powerful foes and each nation told to the 
other what it knew of the good and the 
wise ; and then the Zunis ceased to pray 
for more strength in war, but they prayed 
for more strength to plant corn ; and now. 



164 BOSTON LETTERS. 

he said, we have learned not to pray for 
ourselves alone, but that all nations from 
the rising to the setting of the sun may 
have water, corn and light. He then 
spoke of our Bible, saying that to the 
foolish it was only paper, but to Christians 
it contained the heart of their religion and 
was sacred ; and so it was with their sacred 
things, the foolish said they were only the 
feathers of turkeys and eagles gathered 
and tied with strings, but to the Zunis they 
held the heart of their religion, made sacred 
by the prayers of their ancestors, and the 
life of religion was still in them. I wish I 
could make you see the group. The 
great parlor filled with the luxuries and 
decorations of modern art; the windows, 
with outlook over the rocks, and fields 
bright with autumn flowers; and beyond, 
the open, boundless ocean. A wood fire 
burned on the hearth ; and there, with per- 
haps a dozen white people about him, 
stood this slight, dark, old man, with 
wrinkled face, and eyes glowing with feel- 



BOSTON LETTERS. 1G5 

ing and earnestness. His dark blue clothes 
were trimmed with silver buttons ; the 
simple blouse confined by a broad, silver 
belt; heavy chains of wampum (fine shell 
beads) hung around his neck ; large rings 
of silver in his ears ; his long black hair 
hung loose in front, but was ingeniously 
knotted behind with a ribbon woven for 
that purpose ; and a red silk scarf tied 
round his head. 

They all wore more or less ornaments of 
their own workmanship. There he stood, 
an American Indian ; a savage, illiterate 
according to our standard of learning ; a 
heathen according to our standard of 
religion ; but a man full of intelligence 
and thought and imagination ; a man of 
refined feelings, eloquent speech and broad 
views, loving and serving his God and his 
neighbors. There could be no stronger 
preaching of human brotherhood. As the 
old man talked and Mr. Gushing inter- 
preted, the shadows of twilight fell, and 
when he was silent the company separated ; 



166 BOSTON LETTERS. 

the Indians went to their prayers on the 
ocean's edge, in the fading light, and the 
whites looked into each others' faces, 
astonished, touched and glad to have been 
there. The younger Zunis do not seem to 
mind cold; they wear their blouses open at 
the throat ; but the old man with the deep- 
set glowing eyes, wrapped his blanket 
round him, and with courteous leave- 
taking went to his solitary prayers. He is 
a blanket Indian, that most despised of all 
human beings here in the United States. 
This gentle, eloquent, old man ; this young 
priest, with winning manners and a guile- 
less face ; this other youth, with strong 
features, a satirical smile, and a spirit of 
mockery in his eyes, — are all quiet, pleas- 
ant, patient and polite, wise in their own 
traditions, tolerant of other faiths ; in brief, 
agreeable guests with whom one desires to 
be able to talk freely. They have picked 
up a little English ; enough for a courteous 
" good-morning," or a shy and smiling 
*' thank you" at table. With the white 
people present this Sunday service will 



BOSTON LETTERS. 167 

remain in memory as the most remarkable 
day of this visit of the Zunis. 

In religion the Zunis are Spiritualists. 
The common people pray to the spirits of 
the departed; the select, or special, pray 
to the gods of animals or plants ; while the 
high priests pray to the one God. The 
speeches made by their leaders at the 
reception given them at the City Hall were 
gentle and characteristic. One of them 
said : " My fathers and children, it was to 
see you and to speak with you and to see 
your world that we came with Mr. Gush- 
ing. It was according to the wishes of 
the gods that today our roads of life came 
together ; our country is so poor, yours is 
so beautiful ; ours are a poor people, yours 
are a grand people ; yet, with this differ- 
ence, we see smiles on every face. We 
eat your food, we ride in your carriages, 
we live in your houses, and we thank you 
that such a people as you can show such 
hospitality to people as poor as we. Let 
your hearts be good and gentle, for if you 
were to frown upon us we would die." 



1G8 BOSTON LETTEBS. 



1888. 



One need not go twenty miles from 
Newport to find a region rough and wild 
enough to satisfy the most primitive tastes 
of the most enthusiastic campers-out. 
There is no road leading to it. It is in 
the heart of a private estate, and unless 
you are lucky enough to know its owner, 
Dark Island must remain a myth to 3^ou. 
We started in the strongest of farm wagons, 
with four wheels, with rugs for our feet 
and on the board seats, with firm poles to 
hold on by, and ropes to keep us from 
being flung out by the jolts, with two 
strong horses and their driver, who can 
make a horse go anywhere, excepting up 
a tree, we were ready. There was no 
travelling in public roads, but straight into 
the hay fields we went, accompanied by 
a large negro on foot, carrying an axe, 
who opened the gates and did something 
towards clearing the way. Beyond the 
fields we plunged into wild woodland, un- 



BOSTON LETTEBS. 169 

cleared, kept for the sake of beauty, not 
for profit. It seemed absolutely impossible 
that horses and cart could force their way 
through it, or manage to get over the 
rocks ; they seemed impassable, and would 
have been so to most men, but the driver's 
will was firm and inevitable, and horses 
and cart obeyed it in spite of what seemed 
insurmountable obstacles. Fortunately, 
when we were thrown off our seats by the 
passage over high rocks, or through green 
depths, we came down in the cart, and not 
outside of it. The woods were beautiful, 
and full of enchanting flowers ; and, at 
last, we crossed a wine-colored brook, 
meandering over innumerable stones on 
its way to Narragansett Bay, were dragged 
up a steep little hill, over rocks that were 
larger and longer as we went on, till the 
horses stood still in the centre of a mag- 
nificent hemlock forest. I do not know- 
how old the trees are ; there is no record 
of the time when any were cut ; there is a 
thick carpet of fallen leaves ; the great 



170 BOSTON LETTERS. 

rocks are cushioned with beautiful mosses 
and covered with a thick growth of ferns. 
There are wonderful varieties of plants, 
with variegated green and white leaves, and 
the queer, black and white Indian pipes, 
which grow only in shady places. It is a 
delicious, solemn, cool place, which in a 
summer day, one leaves with regret. Once 
more, there is the rough riding over rocks 
and the uncleared forest, but only for a 
short distance, for we have come out of 
the island by a shorter way ; in the clear- 
ing the wheels crush the juice out of the 
ripe blackberries that grow luxuriantly ; 
and, in a few minutes, we come suddenly 
upon a wide sea view, the ocean sparkling 
in the sunlight, and church towers and 
farmhouses far below us. There is noth- 
ing more charming in driving than these 
surprises of beautiful and extensive views. 
Again we drive through the hay fields, 
and the faithful African, with his axe, 
once more opens the home gates for us. 
It is possible to walk to this wild place, 



BOSTON LETTERS. 171 

for it is hardly more than a mile from the 
house as the crow flies, but the under- 
growth is nearly up to your shoulders, and 
there is a possibility, at least, of making 
the acquaintance of a rattlesnake ; so, on 
the whole, it is easier to drive ; the tre- 
mendous exercise is healthful ; the woods 
are just as nature leaves them, and there 
is genuine enjoyment in being free from 
the limits of a road, and in perfect seclu- 
sion on private property. As we came 
back to the sights, sounds, and dinner of 
civilization ; the young people, who have 
tried the famous woods of New York, 
Maine and New Hampshire, exclaimed : 
" Why should one go to Bar Harbor, the 
Adirondacks or the White Mountains for 
wildness, when this place is so near home ? " 
I think my words have done no justice to 
the wildness, roughness and beauty of this 
place. It is next to impossible for anyone 
who has not driven there to imagine the 
existence of such rocks and trees in this 
region of cultivated farms. Our way was 



172 BOSTON LETTERS. 

fairly forced through a growth so thick 
that it required a strong arm to bend back 
the branches, and only the voice and hand 
of a master could have made the horses go 
on. That not only the hemlocks, but the 
ferns, mosses, and many of the lovely 
things that grow low are evergreen, gives 
a wonderful charm to the *' island" in the 
winter ; very little snow falls there, and 
the tall trees are a protection from wind 
and cold. The wine-colored stream actu- 
ally encircles the place, so that it has full 
claim to the name of island ; and it is 
probably the most picturesque, the most 
unspoiled piece of very wild nature to be 
found on any private property in this part 
of the country. It is kept so because the 
owner loves nature untouched by man ; 
loves it in reality, and in daily life, at all 
seasons and at all hours, as poets love it 
in theory and in words. 

A few miles south of this *' forest pri- 
meval," if we have such a thing, is a group 
of interesting old houses standing near 



BOSTON LETTERS. 173 

the main road. One, in the midst of gar- 
dens and graperies, has for its main room 
the house that was built by the son 
of John Alden and his wife, Priscilla. 
From this beginning the house has grown 
to a goodly size, although no part of it is 
new. In the solid oak panel above the 
generous fireplace in the parlor, the only 
daughter of the house, a most lovely and 
accomplished girl, has carved a verse 
from Chaucer, and round the picturesque 
bay window she, and other artists, have 
wrought pretty and original designs. The 
house is kept full of wild flowers. In the 
huge fireplace of the dining-room, in 
which two or three people might sit at 
ease and look up the chimney to the sky, 
were great vases of tall, gorgeous lilies ; 
and on the hooks of the old crane hung 
baskets of the most brilliant August flow- 
ers. A short distance beyond this old 
farmhouse is a very picturesque dwelling. 
The owner, a clergyman, bought an old 
windmill, moved it to its present site, and 



174 BOSTON LETTERS. 

built around it all the rooms he wanted for 
a summer abiding-place. Planned by a 
Salem architect, decorated by a Providence 
artist and by the owner and his wife, it is an 
attractive place, and, as a dwelling-house, 
unique. From the piazza you enter the 
windmill, which makes the first large 
reception-room, from which an artistic 
staircase leads to the upper portions of the 
house. Above this hall is a bedroom ; and 
above that, occupying the whole upper 
part of the windmill and having two tiers 
of windows, is the owner's study. The 
sea view is toward Newport and the open 
ocean on the south ; the windows are large 
single panes of clear glass, and on the day 
of the yacht races the sight was wonder- 
fully beautiful, with the hundreds of vessels, 
each with every inch of canvas spread to 
catch the languid breeze. Much of the 
interior decoration is in color, mottoes, 
and free, effective designs, drawn deep in 
the rough plastering, or in reliefs modelled 
in white, or fixed to the unsmoothed col- 



BOSTON LETTERS. 175 

ored background. The rest of the house 
is pretty, with artistic windows and cozy 
lounging-places, having enchanting out- 
looks ; but the windmill rooms and the old 
mill chimney are the fascinating part of the 
dwelling for which the mill stones make 
appropriate doorsteps. Another artistic 
neighbor has made a most fanciful bower 
out of the plainest of old houses ; and 
another, a New York artist of note, has 
added to his simple and comfortable home- 
stead, a generous porch, with rooms above 
that are all windows, and a gable in which 
he has painted the portrait of Awashonks, 
the last of the Indian sachems ; a woman 
famous in her time in this region, and 
deserving this remembrance of her. A 
mile or more further south is a beautiful 
shore, with pebble beaches, rocks, surf, a 
lighthouse, a glorious view, a mild climate, 
and sure to have sometime easy communi- 
cation by boat and rail with Providence, 
Newport and Boston. Already people are 
buying land there that is just coming into 



176 BOSTON LETTEBS. 

the market, and it will probably rival the 
North Shore in popularity and the size of 
its " places." 



1888. 

Joseph La Flesche, the Omaha Indian 
chief, and his daughter Suzette, called 
Bright Eyes, were a few years ago guests 
in whom many of us were interested. The 
news of his death moves me to offer this 
tribute of respect to the memory of this fine 
old man. He was the chief of the Omaha 
tribe, who were a long time at war with the 
Sioux and other tribes, but never fought 
the whites. A man gentle and tender 
by nature, always an arbiter in business 
troubles, and a continual peacemaker. His 
children tell many stories of his care that 
they should never harm any living thing. 

The Omaha tribe is small. The chief 
tainship was at last abolished, the tribe 
preferring the more democratic rule of 
several men, like the selectmen of our 



BOSTON LETTERS. Ill 

New England towns. La Flesche had 
a large family of children ; he never 
learned English himself, but made the 
most of every chance for his children, 
obliging them always to speak English at 
home as well as at school. They were 
poor, for there is no way an Indian can 
become rich ; but as soon as the Dawes 
bill passed, he took a farm in the rich land 
of one of the valleys open to his people 
and showed them how good a farmer he 
was. Industrious, temperate, of great 
natural intelligence, a Christian by pro- 
fession and action, he won regard from 
all, and at the agricultural fairs was on 
equal terms with the exhibitors, sometimes 
taking first prizes. But the hardships of 
early life had broken him down, and he 
died after three weeks of intense suffering, 
leaving a widow of beautiful and noble 
character ; she has been to her children 
helpful, tender, patient and brave. No- 
where in the highest civilization is there a 
family where greater reverence, warmer 
13 



178 BOSTON LETTEB8. 

admiration and tenderer love are given by 
parents to children than in this Indian 
family on this far away reservation. 
Suzette, well educated, charming and 
attractive, married a white man ; Rosalie, 
educated at the mission school of the 
reservation, went with her husband to 
Hampton Institute ; Susan stood high in 
her class at the Medical College in Phila- 
delphia ; two other daughters are Hampton 
graduates ; and one son in government 
employ. Joseph La Flesche's last thoughts 
in his intervals of consciousness were for 
his children ; that they might always help 
and care for, and never scatter and lose 
sight of each other. In bringing to mind 
his varied life, his virtues, and the beauti- 
ful things I have heard of him, of his 
wife and the growth of his children in re- 
finement and education, and the pursuit of 
life under difficulties that would appal most 
persons, this story should be told in his 
honor. 



RECOLLECTIONS 



BY 



NATHAN HASKELL DOLE. 



RECOLLECTIONS. 



Martha Le Baron Goddard was a 
unique personality, a strong human mag- 
net, attracting to her all sorts and condi- 
tions of men. That is another way of 
saying that she was sympathetic. How 
many hundreds of life-stories were poured 
into her attentive ears ! she was a mother- 
confessor for a world-wide parish. Boston 
has been reproached for being provincial, 
but Mrs. Goddard's modest parlor was a 
miniature cosmopolis. The Western In- 
dians won a warm place in Mrs. Goddard's 
heart, already melted by Helen Hunt's pas- 
sionate arraignment of their persecutors. 
What a mass of " literary material" came 
to her door by every mail ; a whole novel 
in the letters of a certain Indian agent, — 
*i3 



182 RECOLLECTIONS. 

tragedy of life unfolded before her, which 
she kept sacred, never exploiting the 
secrets of the confessional. 

Literary aspirants found in her a most 
helpful friend ; young actresses knew that 
she would listen patiently to their expe- 
riences ; artists bespoke her appreciation 
and encouragement. 

It was not merely the young, the dis- 
couraged, the aspiring, the adventurous 
who sought her sympathy ; but the suc- 
cessful, the brilliant came also under the 
sway of her influence. She was instantly 
read as a generous, noble, broad-minded 
woman. Her grey hair, her serene fore- 
head, her kindly eyes gave her an appear- 
ance of grand motherliness which invited 
all sorts of confidences. 

Her wit was keen and brilliant ; but did 
any one ever hear her say an unkind or 
ungracious thing? She could be indignant 
at wrong and treachery, but she was 
naturally gentle and appeasing. Her 
sense of humor was always a saving 



BE COLLECTIONS. 183 

grace. In only one thing was it danger- 
ous to touch her, in her absolute, imperious 
independence. She disliked to receive 
favors, much as she liked to confer them. 

There should have been a Boswell to 
record the conversations at her breakfast- 
table. Mr. Goddard's journalistic duties 
keeping him out late at night necessitated 
late breakfasts, and visitors frequently 
happened in. Mr. Goddard was shy and 
rather taciturn, only occasionally letting 
fall some wise or suggestive remark. Mrs. 
Goddard was always scintillating at those 
symposia. She was descended from no 
one knows how many Pilgrim fathers and 
mothers, and her crockery and silver was 
venerable with Plymouth traditions, haloed 
with the very atmosphere of the '* May- 
flower." She trusted no servant to wash 
treasures of such antiquity. As she sat at 
the table, reverently polishing them, she 
would indulge in gay banter or serious 
argument, always with alert mind and 
ready armory of pertinent citations. 



184 RECOLLECTIONS. 

Her house was distinctly literary and 
artistic. As the Review Editor of the 
Advertiser she wielded an influence dis- 
tinctly personal and genial, to use the 
word in its European sense. Her criti- 
cisms were watched for, and, if they were 
favorable, they had a powerful effect upon 
the sale of novel or history. She had a 
distinctive style ; and, though she did not 
sign her articles, any one could recognize 
them, once differentiated. She belonged 
to a class of book-reviewers now rarely 
found ; she took time to estimate the value 
of the book ; and she was honest and 
generous if she praised, honest and fair 
if she had to condemn. 

Publishers, in their advertisements, still, 
as a matter of form, cite the comments of 
the periodicals, but they cite only the 
favorable ones ; and this praise is only per- 
functory, and has only a small effect. It 
would seem as if the day had passed when 
a single unsigned criticism would bring an 
eager throng of buyers to take from the 



RECOLLECTIONS. 185 

book-counters of a city every available 
copy of a recommended publication. 

Her weekly letters to the Worcester 
Spy required a comprehensive interest in 
every public word and work. The newest 
book and the personal equation of its 
author, the exhibition of pictures at dealer's 
or art gallery, the vital value of every play 
in vogue, the appreciation of some long- 
heralded actor, the doings of clubs and 
societies, the activities of all kinds of 
charities, everything that makes up the 
life of a modern city received her attention. 
Nevertheless, she carefully avoided being 
called literary, priding herself far more 
on being a woman and doing a woman's 
work. Every one who came into her 
sphere of attraction was moved to do his 
best. Stimulated to mental flight, she 
liked to elicit autobiographical histories ; 
strangers, coming to make a formal call, 
remained to tell the story of their lives, 
and went away feeling as if they had been 
friends from the beginning. Had she kept 



186 BECOLLECTIONS. 

note-books, what a treasure for the realistic 
novelist ! There she sat, by her window, 
with that serenity of expression which 
made her face remarkable, listening with 
rapt attention, or leading the narrator on 
by well-timed questions. Her spirit seemed 
younger than her years, while her prema- 
turely-whitened hair made her seem older 
than she was. She was like the heroine 
of a story who had outlived all the storm 
and stress of its action, and rejoiced to 
look back from the heights of experience. 
This statement would lead, naturally, to 
biography ; but this is simply a pen-por- 
trait, or, rather, a pencil-drawing, by one 
who lived in her household, who saw her 
every day for months at a time, who loved 
and reverenced her ; who never, in all 
that time, knew of her doing or saying 
an ungenerous thing, and who, with the 
keenest pleasure, welcomes this accom- 
panying memorial of one who, least of all, 
deserves to be only a shadow in the recol- 
lections of a generation passing away. 



